PLEX: How to move library from one HDD to another *instantly*

Question

Using PLEX media server.
I want to move my library from my 3TB HDD to my new 8TB HDD.

My experience showed me PLEX will try to find every single movie (or serie episode), one after the other, on the new HDD, and then mark them as doubled (a little 2 in the upper corner of every item) in the library with an unavailable red flag (for one of both)...

A real mess, believe me, you don't want to go through this.

So how can I move it without such a hassle?

Answer 1

If you ever worked with SQL, this is fairly simple...

The SQLite3 database

On OS X

~/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/Plug-in\ Support/Databases/com.plexapp.plugins.library.db

On Windows

"%LOCALAPPDATA%\Plex Media Server\Plug-in Support\Databases\com.plexapp.plugins.library.db"

On Linux & NAS

$PLEX_HOME/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/Plug-in\ Support/Databases/com.plexapp.plugins.library.db

(Source: PLEX documentation)

HOWEVER, NEVER, EVER, make any modification to your database before you backup the file (a duplicate, a second copy of it) in case things go wrong and you end up with a corrupted database...

So here it is...

The desired database table is section_locations and the column is root_path.

Something like this would do it:

UPDATE `section_locations` 
   SET `root_path`=
       REPLACE(`root_path`, 
               '/Old_Volume_Name/', 
               '/NEW_Volume_Name/')
WHERE `root_path` like '%Old_Volume_Name%';

Make sure to correctly set every occurence (3) of Old/NEW_Volume_Name if you plan to use this example...