I want to move my media files to a different location. To a different NAS even. If I do this and update the path within the PMS to reflect the new location of the data, will it screw up the individual users Watched vs UnWatched status for the media they’ve already watched? In other words, on the next scan will PMS see the different location and do a full re-scan and reset all the files as if they’ve never been watched by anyone? Or will it retain the individual log for each user as to what they have, and haven’t watched?
First thing is this: DON’T MOVE the media. Copy, verify watched status remains, then delete from original location. This assumes the same machine, but different drive location, but the axiom holds true for a new machine, too.
What type of machine are you running PMS on? Is it on one or the other NASes you are working with? Or on a stand alone PC, with mapped drives to the NAS?
This is important, because if it’s a PC, you are going to copy from one NAS to another, then map new drive connections on the PC. When you map those new drives, you point your libraries to the new locations, an Plex will do the work. Every item you have in your media library will have a blue “@” on it when it’s done. And all of your watched status will still be intact. Then you can either remove the old mapping, or remap it to the new location and you can then remove the older/not used mappings from the library.
If this is on a NAS and you are moving to another NAS, though, the process is a bit different. Start here: https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201370363-Move-an-Install-to-Another-System This gives you an idea of what you are going to be looking for, moving the DB around.
Now, third case is going from a PC connected to the old NAS for storage and moving to a different NAS and it hosting PMS. Convoluted to say the least. Possible to do, but could be a nightmare getting everything set up right.
Always always shut PMS down while copying the files from one device to another, especially the DB. Before you move the DB around, make sure the libraries contain what they should contain. If you had 200 movies before, you should have 400 now, then go back to 200 once the old mapping is removed.
Don’t delete ANYTHING until you are 100% sure it exists in both locations and that the Watched Status for YOUR sessions remains the same. If yours doesn’t change, your user’s won’t either.
If you use the same metadata agent now
as you were using when you added these items first into your library,
then yes, the watched/unwatched status will survive.
The status is not stored per file / and or path name but by ‘media identifier’ which is coupled to the agent used.
So if an item was recognised as ‘tv show X’ by TheTVDB agent before, then you movie it, and it is now again recognised as ‘tv show X’ by TheTVDB agent - your watched status will survive.
But if you switched to a different agent inbetween (e.g. TheMovieDatabase), then Plex won’t recognise the files as the same tv show.
I propose you try it first with only 1 or 2 items.
While you’re doing it, seize the opportunity to make your file and folder names conforming to Plex’s demands if you haven’t already done so. This makes things easier.
Filebot
Be sure you have Empty trash automatically after every scan in Settings > Library disabled!
Before moving the data you should do a Refresh of all libraries. After that is done add the new path for each library to PMS. Now shut down PMS. Move your data and when that is done start PMS again. If it doesn’t refresh the libraries do this manually. After that is done you can remove the old path from each library. Done.
That way Plex keeps all the data for your media (seen, unseen, rating, etc.). After you moved your data and do a refresh plex scans the old path’ and can’t find any files. It would show you a warning but then it scans the new path’ and it finds all the files again.
While doing the move you should NOT rename any files or change the path structure in any way. Just copy from old to new. Then you should check for (maybe) incorrectly matched items and fix these. And once everything is perfectly fine you can start changing the directory structure or renaming files. Also be sure you do not “Empty Trash” while checking for incorrect matches, etc. You can do that when everything is done.
ok, I just did this. Here was and is my setup.
PMS on a computer. All data was on my WD mybooklive nas and was accessed as Y:\ drive
I bought a wd duo usb 16tb
I connected it to my pms computer.
Copied all data from my mybooklive nas to the wd duo.
went into pms and changed drive letters from Y:\my media locations to D:\my media locations.
When I did that, it did an automatic scan.
when everything was finished, my watched status on my tv shows and movies were still the same. The only change was in recent for tvs and movies, it did show a couple old ones that had not been watched and put them in recently added. I have a fair amount of stuff that I havent watched yet and it only added a couple of them to recent so I consider that a success.
Thank you all for your quick replies. All good information.
My situation is the PMS is running on a computer. Although I once thought of running the PMS off a NAS, from what I’ve read most NAS’s boxes, unless you build it yourself, do not have enough CPU power to transcode the data on the fly and if they do it likely won’t when 2 or 3 streams are operating at once. So I’m convinced the computer is the best route always for the PMS.
As recommended by a user above, I DID copy (not move) all data to a new NAS. I in essence have 2 copies now of everything, and at the moment I’m running on the old NAS. I copied the same directly structure, everything identical to what is on the current NAS, just to a new NAS that is not currently mapped to the PMS. So, if I understand everyone correctly I simply need to map the new NAS within the Library settings and that’s it! It will re-scan the new NAS structure, find it identical to the original one and Bob should by my Uncel!!
@Verminator14 What you have done is essentially what I suggested you do in my reply.
And it’s the same that @DoomsDay01 did in his.
And FWIW, I run my PMS on an off-the-shelf NAS. Of course mine has a fairly substantial CPU in it. (i3-4330 with just a touch over 5K passmarks.) It’s has as many as 7 streams running at a time, 2 of those transcodes. And it can do as well Direct Playing media as any other server would transcoding. I prep all of my media before PMS ever sees it, to H264, with a stereo AAC English track as the first audio track. If there is an AC# or DTS 5.1 in English, it includes those as a secondary track. All subs are ripped and converted to srt’s. (Most clients can take srt’s as sidecar files without needing to transcode.)
HTH
