PLEX Server - copied library to larger HDD - now it does a new update

Hi there

I copied my movie library to a larger HDD on my NAS -- however PLEX media server did an entire rescan AND UPDATE again of the library - anyway to prevent re-building the DB -- nothing had changed apart from the fact the HDD was larger -- mount points / shares exactly as before, no content had changed so why did PLEX need to rescan and update the entire library (2 hrs !!!. or more)

I can understand that the PLEX DB might contain specific physical HDD pointer locations to speed up indexing etc so surely a quick scan and update any internal pointers - but it shouldn't have gone through the whole process of re-downloading all the meta data and creating all the items again.

I did have the scanner set to PLEX VIDEO SCANNER using Personal media as the agent since these are my video files culled from various places but since the data was copied from another HDD nothing changed.

I s this normal or is there a setting that should only look for CHANGED media -- copying files from a smaller to larger HDD shouldn't have CHANGD any content.

Not a mega problem as I don't need to move media files often -- I was just swapping HDD's in my NAS for much bigger ones however I was really curious as to why the library gets updated in its entirety again.

Cheers
jimbo

paulsalter said:

I think thats normal for it to rescan when things have moved

The recommended way, to prevent re downloading metadata

Add the new drive and add this as a new a folder for your library, so it points to original and new (new is empty at this point)
Copy your media to the new location
Plex will now scan this and show all your media as being duplicated (no re downloading as metadata is already there, each movie etc will show there are 2 versions, this scan should be fairly quick)
delete/remove the old drive and then empty trash in plex

I have tried before replacing drives for plex media, and doing a replace will make it rebuild the library
having the old & new media locations there while doing it prevents this and it matches the 2 together and recognises it already has the media

Hi there

Thanks

Great tip - will remember for next time. !!

Cheers
jimbo