Shifting the server within the same system.

[Bazmax 1]

My server is currently installed on a smaller aging drive within my system and I need to shift it to a new home before it finally dies.

 

Having, over time, added two much larger and faster drives to the system it is my intention, if I can undertake it simply, to shift the server to one of  those new drives rather than buying a new additional drive and cloning the existing server drive.

 

I would appreciate whatever help and advice I might receive from the community; the pros and the cons and possible errors in my thinking.

 

@@cayars

[Carlo 4561]

What OS are you running?

If Windows:

Is Drive C your windows drive?

Is Drive C your current Emby Server drive?

 

Is Emby Server going to get moved to a different drive letter than it is now?

[Happy2Play 9783]

How old is your current installation?

 

Depending on how old your installation is, it is usually best to use the Server Configuration Backup plugin and do a new install/portable and only restore users and userdata.  

 

But that really depends on whether you store metadata and images with media also.

[Bazmax 1]

cayars,

 

My server is currently on drive F: a disk and drive letter I plan to remove.

 

I am considering moving the server to D: or E:

 

C:  SDD

D:  HDD 8tb

E:  RAID 12tb

X:  HDD  8tb  Bitlocked backup disk

 

At a pinch I could partition D: into D: and F: is that is advantageous.

 

Another consideration is our location in the outback with only satellite communications including very limited internet bandwidth so rescanning a lot of metadata, currently hidden in the media folders, is something we would like to avoid.

[Happy2Play 9783]

Ideally if you can maintain path/drive letters you will have no issues with moving entire Emby-Server folder from one drive to another.

 

If said drive letters will change you can do a offline database update changed drive letter for Path and Images columns if needed.

 

Here is are examples, just need to update to your specific needs.

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/63573-36051-metadata-people-empty/page-2?hl=%2Bupdate+%2Bmediaitems+%2Bset&do=findComment&comment=631133

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/73232-change-path-to-network-shares/?hl=%2Bupdate+%2Bmediaitems+%2Bset&do=findComment&comment=737863

 

Some depends on how old your installation is if all items contain tokenized paths or not.  So you would have to check the database Paths and Images columns.

[Carlo 4561]

Bazmax, do you have a premiere license?  If so the backup plugin can be your best friend.

As happy mentioned and what I was getting at is that if you can copy everything to the new/faster drive then rename it to the same drive letter Emby was running on you need to nothing but maybe install Emby Server on top of your existing installation (if needed at all) and you should be good.