Moving a PC/MAC Plex database to ReadyNAS

WARNING: Using the information in this post WILL lead to denial of support and possibly void your warranty. In addition you may lose a good nights sleep if something goes wrong. Basically don't try this unless you understand what you're doing.

There's some documentation out there on moving the Plex server database around but I didn't see anything specific to ReadyNAS so I'll post my general thoughts.. Its not a full walk thru, some experience in moving files around in *nix will be required. If you know how to use cp, mv and chmod you can do this.

Plex on Windows stores the database in:

~\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\

Plex on the Mac stores the database in:

~/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/

You want everything in those folders, EXCEPT the Plug-ins Folder. You want to preserve the original one that the Plex Add on Creates.

Plex on ReadyNAS stores its database at:

/c/.plex/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/

You can't get to that location from a share, only with ssh.

So if you're moving from Plex server on a pc/mac to a ReadyNAS, these are the basic steps:

1. Install Plex Add On to ReadyNAS and then unclick and shut it off.

2. Copy original database from pc/mac to a readynas share. This may take awhile depending on the size of your database. My database is about 4 GB. The database is made up of many tiny files which slows down the copy process.

3. Remove Plug-Ins folder from the original database which you copied to the readynas share. Do this on the copy on the readynas, not the original files on your pc/mac.

4. Remove all folders EXCEPT Plug-Ins from the new database folder that the add on created.

5. Copy files/folders remaining in the original database folder on the readynas share (that you modified in step 3) to the new database folder that the add on created. For reference, the files/folders you're moving are:

drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 4096 2012-05-19 21:05 Cache
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 4096 2012-05-19 21:08 Logs
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 4096 2012-05-19 21:01 Media
drwxr-xr-x  4 root root 4096 2012-05-19 21:07 Metadata
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 4096 2012-05-19 21:08 Plex
drwxr-xr-x  7 root root 4096 2012-05-19 21:09 Plug-in Support
--w-------  1 root root  242 2012-05-20 14:42 Preferences.xml
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 4096 2012-05-19 21:01 Scanners
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 4096 2012-05-19 21:09 Site Configurations

And they are being copied to:

/c/.plex/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/

6. After you've copied the files to their new location, do a chmod -r 777 "Plex Media Server" to prevent permissions issues. There might be a more granular way to set those but I don't care that much.

6. Restart Plex Add On.

7. Go to Plex Media Manager and remove your original file locations and add your new locations. Then do a media update and after awhile, hopefully it all works without needing to recreate your database.

The official Plex documentation for doing this on a pc/mac is at:
http://wiki.plexapp.com/index.php/PlexNine_PMS_TipsTricks#Relocating_your_files_to_a_different_location

Once you've got it all working, you can also create a .tgz file of your database with tar and copy it to a share if you want to back it up.

Good luck!