Migrating emby from NAS to dedicated windows machine

[me@jackbenda.com 1]

I'm planning to migrate my Emby media server from a TerraMaster NAS to a dedicated Windows machine to improve performance and support multiple simultaneous users in my household. 

Current Setup and Proposed Hardware

I'm considering a Lenovo Tiny PC with the following specifications:
- Processor: 4th generation Intel i7 @ 3.1 GHz
- RAM: 16 GB @ 1600 MHz
- Storage: 120 GB SSD

Specific Concerns and Questions:

1. Hardware Performance
   - Will this configuration adequately support my whole family - so 3-4 simultaneous 1080p streams?
   - Should I consider upgrading the RAM to 32 GB? 
   - Are there any known limitations with a 4th generation Intel processor for media streaming? I know that they are getting a bit old now...

2. Migration Complexity
   - How can I effectively transfer my existing Emby server configuration?
   - What's the best approach to maintain my current library metadata and watched status?
   - I want to continue using my NAS as the primary file storage. What are the recommended steps to configure network file paths in Emby? Aware that this may make things a bit more complex...

Additional Context
- My entire family will be accessing the media library concurrently - so possibly 3-4 concurrent streams running either locally or over the internet...
- The media files will remain hosted on the TerraMaster NAS
- I'm looking for a smooth, minimally disruptive migration process

[Happy2Play 9780]

Really going to depend on your codecs as 4th gen will not have any HEVC decoding.

As for migrating all your paths will change there really is no migration path unless you try to manually update the paths in the database.  But really depends on what path you are currently using for your libraries.

Userdata shouldn't be an issue for any item that has providerids ie TMDB/TVDB.

https://emby.media/support/articles/Backup.html

[me@jackbenda.com 1]

Thank you for taking the time to read and respond!

Ah okay that's interesting - so I do have a few HEVC encoded films. Where does HEVC start to be decodable? 

RE: the migration of paths - to clarify, I'm only concerned about users losing their viewing history. I have read that backup, but I'm still a little unclear - when I move Emby to the dedicated server I'm guessing it'll have to remap. I don't see how i could manually update the paths... Will this matter, or will emby work out the viewing history after backup and restore? 

RE the metadata, some of the metadata for my films and TV are custom (niche stuff!). Will that get lost in the switcheroo?

[Carlo 4561]

Hi,

Can you show us what the directories look like you have added to one of your libraries?

[Happy2Play 9780]

On 3/29/2025 at 12:47 PM, me@jackbenda.com said:

Ah okay that's interesting - so I do have a few HEVC encoded films. Where does HEVC start to be decodable? 

Well it is dependent on if the client supports the codec otherwise the server will transcode it.

On 3/29/2025 at 12:47 PM, me@jackbenda.com said:

RE: the migration of paths - to clarify, I'm only concerned about users losing their viewing history. I have read that backup, but I'm still a little unclear - when I move Emby to the dedicated server I'm guessing it'll have to remap. I don't see how i could manually update the paths... Will this matter, or will emby work out the viewing history after backup and restore? 

Overall doing a full restore then removing library folders/updating path will/should work as watch statuses are tracked by providerid.  Only items without providerids will lose their watched statuses.

On 3/29/2025 at 12:47 PM, me@jackbenda.com said:

RE the metadata, some of the metadata for my films and TV are custom (niche stuff!). Will that get lost in the switcheroo?

Depends on if you write nfo files?  If you don't mostly you will as it is only recorded in the database per item and with changing folder path Emby will purge all the old paths items and add the new path items with different dbids.

[me@jackbenda.com 1]

Thank you both again. 

I'm afraid you're pitching all of this a little above my expertise... I'm afraid I'm not 100% sure how I have it set up - more or less default. Whether I'm writing nfo files or not, I am not sure. 

I was hoping to shift transcoding onto my server as some family users are using relatively weak devices to view, and some of my files simply won't transcode locally for them. 

Carlos - how would you like to view these directories? I'm not sure if I follow what exactly you'd need to see. 

Many thanks again!   @Carlo

[Luke 42078]

@me@jackbenda.comdid you complete the migration?