plex Plex & Qnap backups (Need a white knight)

[James Furie]

Hi Folks Need some help here.

 

I want to make a backup of The FULL Plex database which includes images, metadata, Info ect. (Actual Media has several backups).

 

As I understand it Plex does not update the files directly, Everything is held in the database and if this is corrupted you are basically SOL. How can I backup the full Database to and external SSD drive from my Qnap TS-451+ to protect the hours of work about to be poured in to fixing/updating data?  

 

Full Disclosure here, The NAS just works and very happy with it, QTS is based on Linux i think but again it works  Windows/DOS guy from 3.11 & 6.22 Respectively But Linux it's all as clear as mud and not a tinkerer (maybe getting to old?) So I would need, if you can help and would be kind enough detailed "A to B to C" instructions that would be spiffing indeed.

 

I have tried using help but again OLD as the kids say is there an app for that?

 

Thanks for your time and any assistance you can offer.

 

James (LLAP)

 

 

 

 

[Jarsky]

18 hours ago, James Furie said:

I want to make a backup of The FULL Plex database which includes images, metadata, Info ect. (Actual Media has several backups).

 

As I understand it Plex does not update the files directly, Everything is held in the database and if this is corrupted you are basically SOL.

 

The Plex database doesn't contain images. These are held in the Media & Cache folders, and I would really advise against not trying to back those up. Different copies of images are cached depending on the devices that have access your media server so you can easily have 3-4 images per video files. These can easily be re-fetched/cached and take up a large amount of space and a lot of time to backup due to a large number of small files.

 

The database is your most important as that has all your Library info, Server configuration and metadata (including corrected Show/Movie matches). 

A backup file of this is created every week in Plex's AppData folder, so if you want a backup of it, the best thing is just to have a scheduled task/cron job that copies the database backup to another location. 

 

Windows: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Plex Media Server\Plug-in Support\Databases

Linux: /Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/Plug-in Support/Databases

 

The 2 main databases you need to backup and the format of the backup is 

com.plexapp.plugins.library.db-<date>
com.plexapp.plugins.library.blobs.db-<date>

Example of them on my Ubuntu box