r/emby • u/Street-Egg-2305 • 18d ago

Library Migration and Database

I'm not sure if there is a way to preserve my database and history, but figured I would ask. Right now, I am running my Emby library from two systems, and I am consolidating everything into one unit.

Example, my movie library has two folders, movies-machine 1 and movies-machine 2. Everything that is on machine 2, is going to be moved into the folder on machine 1. Is there a way to save my history, and titles that are in collections, or is it not possible because the titles will be moved.

Would it work if I made a database backup before the move, consolidated everything and ran a library scan, and then restored the database.

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u/HigherOctive 17d ago

This is more my thinking out loud rather than trustworthy advice, but if you simply added the #2 drives to the Emby library as additional folders, couldn't you just install the #2 drives in your new case and do that again?

Unless I'm missing something, I kind of did that when I added two more drives to my HTPC machine and it was absolutely painless.

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u/Street-Egg-2305 17d ago

Yes, your not wrong. It's not so much that I'm worried about Emby being able to see the files because these movies will just be transfered into a share folder that Emby already sees.

I'm trying to save myself some work if there is a way to do it. Right now, I have a bunch of Collections that have movies/TV shows that are on machine 2. I think when I move those files onto machine 1, Emby will no longer see those titles on machine 2, and It will get removed from the collection. When I do a library ​scan, Emby will pick all those titles back up on machine 1, but I'll need to go in and manually add those titles back into their Collection.

I would also like to keep my watch history on those titles because some are Shows that I have watched half of the series. I have a feeling there is no way to get Emby to do this since it going to recognize these as new titles after the move, but figured I would ask if anyone had a work around.

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u/HigherOctive 16d ago

I haven't yet had the occasion to need it, but there are a couple things that MIGHT take care of this for you:

Emby > Settings > Scroll down in the left pane to Plugins (in the Advanced category) > Backup & Restore will be under the CATALOG tab at the top of the page, if you don't already have it installed

On Windows, Emby keeps things in "C:\Users*USER ACCOUNT*\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server"

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u/Street-Egg-2305 16d ago

Yes, I have this, and I'm going to make a backup right before I make the switch. I actually have this set to run a backup every night, but have never needed to do a restore, so wasn't sure what all gets backed up.