Any extra backup steps on portable install?

[podonnell 47]

Hi,

I use the backup and restore tool to back up my databases, and I have all metadata selections chosen. However, I am concerned I am not capturing all important data.

I was looking into where the appdata is stored, but the FAQ page on here pointed me to c:\users\user\appdata\ -- but I had nothing there. It seems I installed everything to a local emby folder. (I have system, system.old, and programdata in this folder)

In here I see things like userplaylists, plugin configuration like chapter API, etc..
Do I need to manually back up this folder to encapsulate the full data for emby? I think the backup & restore tool seems to be more about database backups.

 

Thanks for any help.

Edited April 22, 2025 by podonnell

[Luke 42078]

Hi, the same instructions apply:

Configuration Backup

[podonnell 47]

Hmm, but I am only seeing these files in the backup folders.

Perhaps these do contain all data in a different format?

Compared to when I look at the actual install folder, I have plugin configuration folders, userplaylists, and others.

Would that data all be stored in the .db files upon restore? And there is truly no need to back up anything from the install folder itself?

[podonnell 47]

I also see this in the backupinfo file:

 

"IsFullBackup":false,"DateCreated":"2025-04-13T04:10:01.1859901Z","Users":[]

This makes it look like it is not a full backup and there are no users backed up?
The Backup & Restore section doesn't seem to have any way to toggle a 'full' backup either

[Luke 42078]

Try running a backup

[podonnell 47]

Manually? It seems like that method detailed in the FAQ is to just go to the programdata folder and back up the whole folder?

> "From now on this guide will refer to this path as /ProgramData. Simply backup everything in and below /ProgramData using any tool you wish or copy all files to a backup location."

The automated backup that runs gives me just the files I pasted in the image above.
I'm thinking I need to manually back up this programdata folder myself if we can confirm it does contain data not included in the automated backup.

[Lessaj 467]

I believe the rest of the items that you're referring to go into the "embyserver-backup-full" folder and the incremental folders just have the latest DB files. My evidence for this is my full backup folder is from 02-26 but if I drill down into the metadata I can see newer folders were at the time my backup ran last night at 00:30. 

Edited April 22, 2025 by Lessaj

[podonnell 47]

35 minutes ago, Lessaj said:

I believe the rest of the items that you're referring to go into the "embyserver-backup-full" folder and the incremental folders just have the latest DB files. My evidence for this is my full backup folder is from 02-26 but if I drill down into the metadata I can see newer folders were at the time my backup ran last night at 00:30. 

Ha! you are exactly right. There is a embyserver-backup-full folder alongside all of the DB backups. I looked at the modified date and it was in 2024, so I presumed that was manually taken. But drilling into it I see data updated today.
This definitely covers the rest of what I was looking for.

I think I verified this before, set and forget it.... and then the forget part got me.

Hopefully this sticks, the full backup runs alongside the DB backups and is stored there.

[podonnell 47]

I think my only remaining thought from this -- does that full backup run daily, and then overwrite what I had? If so, if say I accidentally deleted a playlist I wanted to restore, I have to realize that within a day? Otherwise I need something else backing up the backup folder daily?

[Luke 42078]

To easily restore a deleted playlist, yes you'd have to catch it within a day.

After that, technically they still exist in those extra .db copies, but we haven't really created a process to extract them.