Moving Plex from Synology to TomSparkBox
Posted by BiltmoreLaker
Folks, I have a TomSparkBox "adjacent" question I need help with. I am switching from running Plex on a Synology NAS (directly installed - NOT via Docker) to Plex on a UGreen hosted SparkBox (which IS a Plex Docker implementation). I have a Plex Pass. My goal is to migrate the entire implementation over without losing any metadata (including retaining watch status, series identification-including watch-next status, etc.) I've copied the media over (using rsync with both implementations shut down). Now I need to copy/adjust the meta data, which I think is in a sqlite database plus need to know where they are on both systems so I can copy the relevant files over.. Tom AI says that the database contains explicit file location names that need to be altered to conform to the new media locations. But some online "guides" seem to say scanning will update that info automatically. Has anyone done this successfully and can guide me to the right way to do it? I just want to migrate the whole setup, not keep them in sync. And there is currently only one user. Thanks in advance.
1 replies
Chris wrote:
Got it — great thinking through metadata migration upfront. For Plex on SparkBox, the database files live at /opt/sparkbox/state/plex/ (or your SBDATADIR). Plex metadata is in the config directory. For your migration: 1. Stop both Plex instances (Synology and SparkBox) so they do not write during copy. 2. Backup your SparkBox Plex state directory first. 3. Copy the Plex config from Synology into SparkBox Plex state folder. 4. Restart SparkBox Plex: sparkbox restart plex. Plex will scan media; if paths changed, it will prompt you to re-map or rescan. Plex handles location changes well automatically. Since you have one user, no multi-user sync risk. Watch history and series metadata are in the database. Let me know how the migration goes — if you hit path conflicts or library won't scan, we can troubleshoot.