Migrating to new Windows Server and Changing Directories?

[qazwsx16 0]

Currently in the process of setting up a new server and want to simplify my drives in the process (consider utilizing StableBit DrivePool). Wanted to verify the process I'm considering based on what I've read before:

Background information:

• Currently running Emby Windows Server (4.9.1.10)
• Current OS: Windows 11 (future server OS: Windows 11 as well)

Process:

1. Utilize the Backup & Restore Plugin (https://emby.media/support/articles/Backup.html)
   1. Get Emby Premiere (monthly subscription)
   2. Follow the instructions on their to back up everything.
   3. Shut down Emby Server.
   4. Manually move all drives to new server and name them the same letters (this should retain all of the filepaths)
   5. Install Emby Windows Server on new server.
   6. Follow the instructions to restore everything.
   7. Run scan
   8. Test by playing some videos for a day or two.
   9. Install any plug-ins that I was utilizing before 
2. Move Drives
   1. Shut down Emby Server.
   2. Install StableBit DrivePool
   3. Have a single "drive" for all movies, TV shows, etc. (e.g., just 'Z' instead of 'W', 'X', 'Y').
      • Z:/Movies
      • Z:/TV Shows
      • Z:/etc.
   4. Start up Emby Server.
   5. Run scan.

Am I oversimplifying it, or would that be everything I need to?

[Mahinepua 81]

I built a duplicate server but was already using drivepool with a single drive letter.

The backup and restore plugin will look for the old file paths, if you keep these identical it should work fine.

If your using trying to use drivepool after the fact with a single virtual drive it may try and scan your libraries from scratch.

Someone else may be able to comment.

[qazwsx10 7]

6 hours ago, Mahinepua said:

I built a duplicate server but was already using drivepool with a single drive letter.

The backup and restore plugin will look for the old file paths, if you keep these identical it should work fine.

If your using trying to use drivepool after the fact with a single virtual drive it may try and scan your libraries from scratch.

Someone else may be able to comment.

Interesting! So maybe I should reverse it? Drivepool first and then migrate?

[darkassassin07 652]

It won't really make much of a difference. There is no method to change the existing file structure of an emby library. When you switch from multiple drives under different letters, to a single drive pool; Emby will remove everything in the previous structure as if the media had been deleted, then rescan the new structure adding it all in as if it was new media and retrieving new metadata for it.

 

The one way around this is to enable .nfo saving and reading. Emby can write the metadata to .nfo files alongside the media files, including the 'date added', then read and restore that info during the re-scan when the structure is changed.

I'm not certain if Emby will write these files for existing media, if it wasn't already enabled when it was first added though. Perhaps if you use the 'refresh metadata' command.

[qazwsx10 7]

2 minutes ago, darkassassin07 said:

It won't really make much of a difference. There is no method to change the existing file structure of an emby library. When you switch from multiple drives under different letters, to a single drive pool; Emby will remove everything in the previous structure as if the media had been deleted, then rescan the new structure adding it all in as if it was new media and retrieving new metadata for it.

 

The one way around this is to enable .nfo saving and reading. Emby can write the metadata to .nfo files alongside the media files, including the 'date added', then read and restore that info during the re-scan when the structure is changed.

I'm not certain if Emby will write these files for existing media, if it wasn't already enabled when it was first added though. Perhaps if you use the 'refresh metadata' command.

Ah I should have clarified that I store all of the content that is created during the scan along with the media (I forget the setting/terminology).

[qazwsx10 7]

So I just checked and confirmed within the current media folders I have the:

• Media file
• NFO
• BIF
• Artwork (logo, fanart, poster, landscape)

[Neminem 1518]

Jep that sounds right, with nfo saver / reader enabled.

[qazwsx10 7]

Perfect, so this may be a dumb question, but if you pool multiple drives together, when you scan new media, how does Emby know which drive to actually place the NFO into?

For example, let's say I have movies in: D, E, and F. But I pooled them into Z. If I put a movie in D and E, since Emby will see both of them as Z, is Emby able to place the files apporpriately in D and E?

[darkassassin07 652]

That's entirely up to whichever drive pooling method/software you use. Ideally, data is shared across all the drives to even out wear across all drives, with parity data to help recover from drive loss. (RAID5/6)

I don't know anything about StableBit, so I can't say how they do it. They may just fill one drive, then fill the next, and so on. Idk

I also don't know how they handle drives that already have data on them. Usually drive pooling is setup with empty discs, then data is put on them. Very much uncharted territory for me.

[Happy2Play 9780]

On 11/29/2025 at 7:14 AM, qazwsx10 said:

Perfect, so this may be a dumb question, but if you pool multiple drives together, when you scan new media, how does Emby know which drive to actually place the NFO into?

For example, let's say I have movies in: D, E, and F. But I pooled them into Z. If I put a movie in D and E, since Emby will see both of them as Z, is Emby able to place the files apporpriately in D and E?

The POOL is Z (or whatever you have assigned to it) and all your individual drives letters become irrelevant as all Emby knows is all your media is on Z.  

As I have drives A-Y assigned to drives but none are technically needed (just to move media around if needed and Emby could careless).  Just don't assign individual drives to Emby.

[qazwsx10 7]

1 hour ago, Happy2Play said:

The POOL is Z (or whatever you have assigned to it) and all your individual drives letters become irrelevant as all Emby knows is all your media is on Z.  

As I have drives A-Y assigned to drives but none are technically needed (just to move media around if needed and Emby could careless).  Just don't assign individual drives to Emby.

Thanks for the explanation! So in this hypothetical (internal drives of D, E, and F, but pooled to Z), if I have a movie in 'D', it is possible that Emby will save the NFO in a different drive?

And in your opinion would you recommend migrating first or pooling the drives first?

[Neminem 1518]

Have a read StableBit - The home of StableBit CloudDrive, StableBit DrivePool and the StableBit Scanner

That should clear up questions.

And post here for questions after that.

Forums - Covecube Inc.

[Happy2Play 9780]

3 hours ago, qazwsx10 said:

Thanks for the explanation! So in this hypothetical (internal drives of D, E, and F, but pooled to Z), if I have a movie in 'D', it is possible that Emby will save the NFO in a different drive?

And in your opinion would you recommend migrating first or pooling the drives first?

The odds are your metadata/images will be scattered across as many drives as you have in your pool as Emby has no way to control where your Pooling software places content.  So every drive will have your Pool folder hierarchy.

Pool

Random drive

So depending on how you have Pooling software configured ie to fill one drive at a time or balance across all your drive is really up to you as your content in the end could be scattered across all drives in the pool.

 

[qazwsx10 7]

2 minutes ago, Happy2Play said:

The odds are your metadata/images will be scattered across as many drives as you have in your pool as Emby has no way to control where your Pooling software places content.  So every drive will have your Pool folder hierarchy.

So depending on how you have Pooling software configured ie to fill one drive at a time or balance across all your drive is really up to you as your content in the end could be scattered across all drives in the pool.

This is great to know! So from your experience do you have any recommendations on best practices on organization in a pool setting? It's looking like you opted for separate alphabetical folders.

[Happy2Play 9780]

3 minutes ago, qazwsx10 said:

This is great to know! So from your experience do you have any recommendations on best practices on organization in a pool setting? It's looking like you opted for separate alphabetical folders.

In the end it is user preference, but I didn't like having so many items in one parent folder.  But you will want to have that hierarchy before creating Emby library.

In my case

And only see the hierarchy in folder view as other views already flatten/collapse the view.

 

 

[Dickydodah! 154]

@qazwsx16I use DrivePool and have a slightly different way you could make the change. It's been a while since I did this so hopefully I've remembered all the steps. I would suggest making a trial run before changing everthing in your live setup.

If you move all the data drives to the new PC with the same drive letters all will work Ok as Emby will already know the paths.

You can add all these drives to DrivePool which just creates a new hidden folder called PoolPart.xxxxxxx in the root of each drive which is actually your new drive, we will call it Z:\ On this new drive Z:\ create empty directories that will contain the files when you move them to the pool. i.e. if you have D:\Movies,  E:\TV Shows,  F:\Music you would need to create Z:\Movies,  Z:\TV Shows and Z:\Music as empty folders. This needs to be done as you have to add these to Emby as extra paths.

Next you will need to add the  Z:\Movies,  Z:\TV Shows and Z:\Music paths in Emby/Libraries alongside the existing paths.

Shutdown Emby.

Move (not copy) the media folders on each drive into the PoolPart.xxxxx folder on the same drive which will be quick as it is only changing the index in Windows.

In DrivePool you will probably need to Re-Measure the pool so that DrivePool now knows about the new files. This may take quite a while as it has to index every file. My PC took about an hour to index 15TB of files so not too bad.

Startup Emby and rescan your libraries (Scan Library Files not Refresh metadata). Once finished remove the old paths from the Library settings.

Optionally use Windows Disk Management to remove the old drive letters from the physical HDDs. Recommended as it tidies up Windows Explorer and you shouldn't realy be writing to the drive outside of DrivePool (Z:\)

Don't forget to change paths in all the other programs you may use such as Sonarr or Radarr.

You can migrate as little or as much as you like from you "old" drives to your new Z:\ drive in lots of small steps if you like so that you can test each time, just ensure your paths are identical except for the actual drive letter.

 

 

 

 

[qazwsx10 7]

Hey everyone, just wanted to give a status update since it's been a month. Thank you for the feedback @Happy2Playand @Dickydodah!. It's taken a while, but after installing DrivePool, I've finally finished moving all the content to a single folder! I can't believe how much it simplified the entire process! And for anyone who thinks DrivePool is going to be very technical, let qualm concerns, it was incredibly straightforward. I think I ran into only one small issue that I figured out how to work around after a few minutes.

Question.

Originally, I stored the Emby install on a separate NVMe (Z:\), but for the new server, I was planning on installing it on the C drive. The actual media file and NFOs will all stay on the Z drive though. So my question for the group is, will changing the drive letter the Emby Server install is on break anything?

Edited January 5 by qazwsx10

[Dickydodah! 154]

Good question  I've never tried moving the emby install location but in theory there should not be too many issues as in the scenario you are describing the paths to the media will still be the same so the database should be Ok with that. However there are other paths that will be incorrect. If you use the three dot menu on the dashboard page to look at the paths it will give you a starting point. This is what my Emby looks like;

Version 4.9.1.90

Folders

Programme Data   C:\Users\XXXXXXXX\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\programdata

Cache   D:\Emby\cache

Metadata   D:\Emby\metadata

Logs   C:\Users\XXXXXXXX\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\programdata\logs

Transcoding Temporary Files   D:\Emby\transcoding-temp

My guess would be that if I moved my install from the C:\ drive to the Z:\ drive Programme Data and logs would get broken. The others would be fine as they are on a completley separate drive. Logs would not really be an issue as they are cleaned out anyway but moving the Programme Data folder probably will need the database editing but I'm sure someone who knows more about the database will clarify this.

The process I would be looking at is;

1. Make a full backup of the current install on Z:\

2. Uninstall Emby

3. Install a fresh Emby on C:\

4. Import the backup made in step 1.

I actually doubt that it is that simple due to the programme data path but we shall wait for someone who knows more than I 

One last point, having your emby install on a fast drive is a good thing, why do you want to move it to the C:\ drive?

[qazwsx10 7]

@Dickydodah!Appreciate the help again! So the new boot drive is a Samsung 980 NVMe, which should actually be a bit faster (but I think it is negligible). My motherboard can have two NVMe installed, so I was thinking of potentially utilizing the other port as an expansion for SATA drives as my library grows. But now that I think about it, I could I use my pre-existing PCI->NVMe to keep it on the Z drive and reduce opportunities for issues to pop up...

I was originally thinking of keeping my current NVMe on this server just utilize it as a desktop, but now I'm thinking I should just keep it simple. And now that I think of it more, this would put less strain on my C drive. I just don't need 3TB worth of NVMe. Haha.

Edited January 5 by qazwsx10

[Dickydodah! 154]

KISS is a good principal but it's still a good question. I've thought a bit more about it and I reckon I might be a little over pessimistic and the restore from a backup might be as simple as it seems, I've never done it so can't be sure. If you just want more SATA ports for media files on HDDs then a cheap PCI SATA card will do it as you don't need fast drives for the media files. I have 10 HDDs and 2 SSDs in my system and can't really tell from the speed which is connected to which interface. I found it cheaper to buy used 3 & 4TB drives and a PCI SATA card than to invest in larger drives.

[qazwsx10 7]

I took the plunge and did the transfer and initial testing looks great! Going to do some much more detailed vetting this weekend. Thank you again for all of the help!

For anyone else that stumbles onto this thread and wants to know what I did:

1. Purchased/Installed Stablebit DrivePool and pooled all my drives together.
2. Shutdown Emby
3. Reorganized my entire library by dropping them into the hidden folder that DrivePool created and changed settings in Balancing to restrict where new files would go (I know the purpose of DrivePool is to let it organize files for you, but I wanted to keep all TV shows on 1-2 drives, Movies on etc. etc., but I didn't want NFOs and Emby generated files to go to drives that were not where the original media was stored).
4. Restarted Emby and scanned library
5. Purchased Emby Premiere (one month)
6. Installed Backup & Restore and ran it (then backed up those files just in case)
7. Shutdown Emby
8. Deactivated DrivePool
9. Transferred drives to new PC (reassigned original drive letters)
10. Installed Stablebit DrivePool and reactivated (automatically pooled my drives again)
11. Installed Emby (entered my Premiere code)
12. Installed Backup & Restore
13. Followed this (https://emby.media/support/articles/Backup.html#how-to-restore-using-the-backup--restore-plugin) and restored the "embyserver-backup-full"

Appreciate all of the help everyone over the past few months!

[Dickydodah! 154]

Drivepool does make it easy. I like the duplicate folders part of it as I can protect the more important files. Glad it went well

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

4 hours ago, Dickydodah! said:

Drivepool does make it easy. I like the duplicate folders part of it as I can protect the more important files. Glad it went well

Not only does DrivePool work VERY well and allow my plethora of drives to be accessed as a single unit but it is also one of the most stable pieces of software I have ever owned. I currently have 13 drives pooled and I have run DrivePool on my server since at least 2015 and it has never crashed. Of course drives do fail from time to time but the only time I lost any important files was when I was relocating my server rack with everything running (it has a UPS that will hold it up for about 30 minutes) and I snagged a couple of the USB cables and four drives failed at the same time due to the impact with the ground. At least several of them held a LOT of the same data, even though I used DrivePool's duplication feature I lost about 15-20 movies and much of the metadata for a lot of my movies. I had a backup for most of that but still had to re-rip two movies and the amount of space i lost meant I had to turn off duplication for a while while I replaced the drives. I was nervous the whole time I had duplication off. 

I actually had forgotten just how efficient DrivePool is and I thought I would have to move some files manually but DrivePool did not need my help and after a few days the drives, new and old, were all balanced again. The only thing I had to do was the re-rip and force an update to all the metadata through Emby. That was a traumatic experience but it was made MUCH easier by the robustness of DrivePool.

The only drawback to using  DrivePool is that we have to trust the software to do as it says it will. It just makes having a large Emby server almost easy.

FWIW: I do NOT run anything but DrivePool and the Emby server on my machine that is my Emby server. I have seen some reports of problems with people using their server as a daily use computer as well as running the Emby server and DrivePool. I strongly recommend against using an Emby server as a daily use computer particularly if it also has to run support programs like DrivePool. 

[qazwsx10 7]

Follow-up question. The only client for the Emby Server is an Nvidia Shield. I tried to stop it from trying to access the old server, but it attempts to access it before shifting over the new server. It usually takes about 10 seconds for what used to take a second or less. Unsure if I should ask this question on the Android section of this forum.

[Dickydodah! 154]

Not quite sure what you are asking here but if you don't want the Shield trying to access the old Emby why don't you just shut it down? Just the Emby program not the whole PC as I assume you are still wanting that to be running.