How to Transfer your Plex Library from One Plex Container to Another

hi there and welcome to another video this video is all about how to move your Plex library from one Plex container to another sounds interesting then let's get started [Music] [Music] okay so this video is about how to migrate a plac server from one container to another so what's the point in doing that well there's a few reasons why you might want to do so but I think the main reason for doing it is when a container is no longer maintained and the containers depreciated so what that means is whilst the container is still going to work we're just not going to get any future updates and so we're going to be stuck on that last version that the maintainer uploaded now recently one of the main Plex containers has stopped being supported and that's the one that was made by lime technology now if you're wondering why they've stopped maintaining this container well it's because there are lots of other containers for plaques out there and there's even one for unread that's actually maintained by Plex themselves so the guys over at lime technology think their time would be better focused on improving the unread operating system rather than putting their time into maintaining and updating containers where there's plenty of other options so if you're running the lime technology container do you actually need to update it well the short answer is actually no it's not going to actually stop working but if I log into the container here on my backup server whilst it's still working fine and it's going to continue working okay looking at the top here we can see that there's a new version of Plex available for downloading and so the version I'm using here isn't current but we shouldn't really update software from within the software itself when we're using it inside of a container we should always wait for the maintainer of the container to make an update to the container which contains the updated software wow that's a lot of times I've said container and contains where anyway that's really besides the points because in the plaque software itself that isn't an upgrade button you only get the option to download a newer version in your web browser and update manually and this is just going to download it on to my computer and not in the container so I'd actually have no way to run this update anyway so that basically leaves us two options will either stay on this version forever or we swap to another container which has already got the update installed inside of it so yes you could just delete the existing container add a new container and set up Plex just like you did the first time but the problem with doing that is it going to lose all of your watch history and you can have to read all of the libraries and Reis crave all of the metadata for each TV series and movie that you have and that's going to take a whole lot of time so we're not going to do that we're going to set up a new container but transfer all of our existing library and all of our Plex metadata into that new container so we're not going to lose anything at all and the process is only going to take us a few minutes now before we start we're just going to need to look at our libraries and make some notes so I've only got two libraries here movies and TV shows so let's go across to your movies library and click on the three dots here and go to edit and then click on add folders and we can see the folders here that we already have and my movies folder is pointing to /media forward slash movies so let's make a note of that and so let's click on cancel here and let's have a look at the TV shows location again edit add folders and this time it's Ford's flash media forward slash TV so let's make a note of that as well okay so let's come out of this web UI and go to the docker tab and let's stop the Plex container and now let's have a look at the template and so you see here the container path /media is mapped across on this server to a share called media and if I look here I've got movies music and TV so this is really important that in the new container we make our mappings to be exactly the same as they're in this container because Plex is going to be looking for the path forward slash media forward slash movies for me and /media forward slash TV as well so if we click on here where it says show more settings we can see that the configuration of plex which is where our library will be is mapped across into the app data share into a folder called plex media server so let's have a look at that and for that let's open up a new tab and I'm going to go into my cache drive which is very my app data is click on to app data and then here's the folder here plex media server so I'm gonna click onto that and then there's a folder called library and then application support and then a folder called plex media server now inside of this folder here is basically all of your Plex Library and metadata so again let's remember this file structure inside of the app data and now let's go across to the apps tab and choose a new Plex container to install now you can see there's quite a few different plex containers available and we're firstly going to swap our plex into the linux server container but afterwards we're also going to be looking at swapping into the bin hex container and also the official plex media server by Plex container ok so let's go to the linux server container and click on to install and if we scroll down here we can see all of our mappings now what I'm going to do I'm just going to bring up both templates side by side ok so here's our original container which we're migrating from and here's the container that we're migrating to so let's look at the difference between these two containers well the mapping is very different in the original container you can see that there's a mapping to /media and that mapping goes across to all of the movies TV shows and music when I first set up the lime tek container that's what I chose for my mapping but you may have chose something different so yours might not be mapped to /media so just take a note to how things are maps in the lime technology container for you because we're going to need to copy those mappings into the new container which we're migrating to it's very important that the mappings in the new container we're migrating to are the same as the original one otherwise when we try and browse to our Plex library it won't actually know where it is remember when we were looking in the Plex web UI earlier and looking at where my movies were mapped to they were mapped to the location /media which is this mapping here in the container and then to the subfolder movies so if that /media doesn't exist when we transfer the library into the new plex Tanner is going to be looking for it there and looking in the linux server container over here we don't have any mappings to /media we've got forward slash movies forward slash TV and /music so we're going to have to create the same path that's over in this container manually here so what I'm going to do is remove all of these existing paths the forward slash movies /t b and forward slash music but I'm going to leave these other things in the container as they are so now I'm going to click on add another path port variable label or device and we're going to add a new path I'm going to call it media and for the container path it's going to have to be the same as what we've got in this container here so forward slash media and of course it's got to map across to the same place as if it's mapping in the original container so for me that's for /mnt forward slash user forward slash media and click add ok so now we've got the container paths the same in each container so with that done I'm going to click on to apply and pull down the linux server container installing it onto the server ok so now the linux server Plex container that we're migrating to is installed and running but if we go to the plex web UI in the new container then we can't see our library that's because we haven't actually migrated the library across at all all we've done so far is just to make the mapping to where our media resides on the server however the database and the metadata for the library is actually kept in the app data for the plex container so let's close this window and go back to the docker tab on the unread web UI okay so let's stop the plex container here and let's open the template of the old plex container and click on show more settings here and here is the location of the AppData folder which is where all of our plex library resides so take a note of that and now I'm going to go back to the docker tab here and now I'm going to use a file manager I'm going to use crusader here to browse to my app data folder on the server okay so here's the app data here and here's the updater of the old Plex container here so let's have a look inside okay so inside we've got a folder called library and then inside that application support and inside that we've got one called plex media server now inside of here this is everything that makes up our Plex library okay so in this other pane here I'm also going to go into the app data folder and this here this is the new app data for our new Plex the linux server plex container so let's have a look inside of there so it's going side and again we've got a folder called library and inside there application support and inside there plex media server and here are all of the files that make up the library in the new Plex container so as we want to use our old Plex library we can actually delete all of these so let's go up a directory and delete the folder called plex media server and now across on the other pane which is in the old Plex library I'm going to go up a directory a song to move this folder here or cross over into the other pane which is the new plex app data now I'm choosing move and not copy because the Plex library is a really big folder gigabytes and gigabytes in size and if I was to choose copy well it's going to take a really long time but moving it is going to be pretty much instant so now that's the old Plex library moves across into the new Plex container in the correct place so now when we start up the container we'll be straight into our old library so let's close crusader and test that out so let's start up plex and go to the web UI ok so here's all of our library or working correctly all of our watch histories here so of course we can just continue watching what we were before and so Plex is successfully transferred from one container to the other okay so let's close the web UI here and so now that we know Plex is working fine here we can remove the old container and go back to crusader again back to app data and remove the old Plex container app data now be really sure that it is the old one that you're removing and not the new one otherwise you're going to be pretty unhappy and now we can close this shutdown Crusader and the jobs all done okay so here we are back with just the lime tek container installed and now we're going to look at swapping across to the bin hex container so let's go across to the apps tab and we'll install the bin hex container and here we can see that the mapping here is the same as it was in the other container here it's /media now like I said in the original container for me my container path was /media that yours might have been different so if it was you'd have to change that here but all I have to do is actually just map it across to my media share here then click on to apply to pull down the container okay so now we can see the bin hex plaques containers install obviously again going to the web UI is going to bring us to a blank server so let's shut the container down and go to crusader and across the app data and here's our old plex app data so let's go inside of there to library application support and plex media server and let's go into the app data for the new plex container the bin hex one and let's look inside of here so inside here it's slightly different to what it was inside the other container but inside this folder here plex media server here's all of our library so we need to delete this folder here and then move the old plex media server folder into the bin hex one now go back to the docker tab start up the bin hex Plex and go to the web UI and here we are again with our Plex library or working correctly okay so now we're going to migrate the lime tech Plex container to the official Plex container now this is actually the easiest one to do where I saved it to last because I wanted just a show where Plex actually stores its library and its files and just showing that each containers app data where it actually stores it isn't exactly the same okay again let's have a quick look at the lime tek template and let's click on show more settings now there's two things here the name of this container is exactly the same as what the official Plex containers named and obviously you can't have two containers name the same thing so because I don't want this container to be wiped out straight away I'm just going to rename this one to Plex Media Server lime now we're just looking at the updater location path here because in a moment when we install the official Plex container you're going to see that the app data configuration path is exactly the same so both containers use the same path and within that path inside of the app data the file structures exactly the same as well and because of that it means we're not going to have to move any files around at all it will just use our existing library straight away so the only thing here we need to take note of is where our plex media is mapped to so here mines Maps a forward slash media yours might be different so just note it down okay so with that noted down are now going to click on apply and we can see here the containers renamed so now let's go across to the apps tab and do a search for Plex and download the official container so let's look at show more settings so as you can see there the app data location is exactly the same now this path here is where we map our media to so for me mindless maps are /media so I need to change this so I'm going to click on to edit change the container path from /data to /media and obviously map that across to the right location I'm going to delete the description so another ones Auto created then click Save okay so that's good now the transcode path here I'm going to set this to transcode inside of the app data folder so I'm going to copy its path here and then paste it in up here they're going to add an additional folder so I'm going to type forward slash transcode and it's going to have its own folder within the app data for the transcoding to work in and it's a good location for the transcoding because for most of us the app data is on an SSD although transcoding and RAM I think is better but that's for another video okay so the last thing to fill in is something you might not have seen before in other Plex containers that's this variable here the Plex claim variable so let's copy this URL here and paste it into the browser then you'll be asked to log into your plaques account now if you don't have one you can sign up here but log in and then you'll come to the Plex claim code page copy your claim code go back to the unread web UI and paste it in okay so with the code pasted in we can now click on apply and pull down the container okay so now we can see both containers here now the reason I renamed this one and then just leave it as it was is because I wanted to actually make sure the whole container is removed so now I'm going to click on remove and I'm going to tick also remove image and remove the lime Tek container here okay so now when we open the official Plex container here everything's working fine or here's all our library and metadata and I can continue watching ET here so everything's working absolutely fine so that's it that's everything and it brings us to the end of another video and I want to give a huge thanks to all of my patrons and support us out there without you guys I wouldn't bear to make these videos and if you would like to join that great bunch of people then you'll find links to do so in the description and if you found this video useful or you liked it then please hit up that like button and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already anyway guys it's time for me to go but whatever you're up to for the rest of the day I hope it's good and I'll catch you in the next video

Channel: Spaceinvader One

Views: 26,681

Rating: 4.9486237 out of 5

Keywords: plex unraid, migrate plex, lime technology, unraid, docker, media server, plex libary, plex library, migrate plex library, plex watch history, spaceinvader one, spaveinvaderone, tutorial, guide, how to, How to Transfer your Plex Library from One Plex Container to Another, swap plex, plex docker, swap plex docker, swap plex container

Id: 7RgPx7BN8DE

Length: 17min 28sec (1048 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 30 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/spaceinvaderone]

So if you were running the Limetech plex container then you may have noticed that it is not being maintained anymore. So time to swap it out.

But we want to bring all of our libraries and watch history etc with us .....

[u/kevo5386]

I just pointed the new to the old. I'm worried that when I watch this video Is it going to tell me that is the one thing that you should never do...

[u/IMI4tth3w]

so i spent a couple days setting up my plex server in binhex plex docker only to have nothing but issues with getting my p2000 hardware transcoding to work (followed u/spaceinvaderone video exactly). went to linuxserver's plex docker and it worked perfectly first time. This is somewhat unrelated but i figured i'd share to maybe help someone decide which container they want to go with if they are planning to use hardware transcoding.

[u/coldwar_7]

I literally did this the day before your video went up and messed it up... So sad. I don't know if it would have worked for me anyway though because I had weird permissions issues. I was transferring from a home brewed Ubuntu server solution to unraid. Both using the plex official container, but had issues when transferring my app data.

[u/arttist]

Thank you for this now if we can just get Plex to fix the horrible new interface that keeps resetting on fire sticks