Hi, I just turned on video preview thumbnails and it took about 40 hours altogether to complete. If I were to change the location of my media, say move files up or down a directory as part of general reorganizing, would Plex retain the preview thumbnails (and metadata generally) or would it have to fetch and regenerate it all again? What if the media is temporarily unavailable (say a day or two)? At what point does Plex decide the media is gone and purge all the metadata/thumbnails for it? Is it based on the schedule?

 

I'm asking because one of my media drives is almost full and I want to temporarily offline some older, less viewed content to free up some space, but eventually return that media to the library. The content may only be gone a week while I procure some new drives so not sure what's the best way to preserve the Plex metadata and preview thumbnails for the content in the meantime.

 

Can someone explain how Plex would react in these circumstances? Thanks!

 

By default Plex does regular maintenance of its databases, adding new media, purging old removed items and refreshing its metadata but it's also highly configurable so the answer really depends on how you've customised it. You'll find a lot more information on the Plex forums as this isn't an Unraid-specific question.

This is such a DUH moment for me. I meant to post this in the Plex forums but I'm working on several issues at the same time and inadvertently posted it here instead. Thanks John for humoring me with a reply!