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Message: [QUOTE="Bombastus, post: 91431, member: 2178"] Plex’s scheduled database backups preserve viewing information and library matches, but they do not include all the artwork stored by your server. Restoring one can bring back your movies and watched status while leaving gaps where your chosen posters should be. You might notice this with a collection you spent hours getting right. The titles return in the app, yet the matching covers don’t. A successful database restore doesn’t prove the image files survived alongside those records. Before trying another restore, check what you actually saved. A dated database file, a copy of the server’s full data directory, and a folder of original poster images offer different recovery options. [HEADING=2]Cleanup can erase artwork an older database needs[/HEADING] Missing posters alone don’t establish that cleanup caused the loss. Plex can also miss downloaded artwork when a refresh is interrupted. Test a metadata refresh on one affected title before committing to another database rollback. Plex stores poster images and other metadata on your server in packages called bundles. Removing an item from a library leaves its bundle behind temporarily. The Clean Bundles operation deletes bundles belonging to items that are no longer in the library. Consider a backup taken before you removed a group of movies. If bundle cleanup runs after their removal, restoring that earlier database cannot bring back the artwork files the cleanup deleted. An older database may be usable even when the artwork needed to recreate its appearance has already gone. Weekly bundle cleanup runs automatically by default. Choosing an older database doesn’t reverse everything that happened to the server’s files afterward. Check for a full server data backup from before the artwork disappeared. A more recent archive may already be missing the images you want, even if it contains a healthy database. Stop Plex and keep a separate copy of the current data before experimenting with older versions. Avoid removing and recreating libraries as your opening move. Adding cleanup to that process can delete surviving bundles before you’ve established which artwork you still have. [HEADING=2]Backup timing can give you false confidence[/HEADING] Scheduled database backups normally run every three days, with up to three copies kept in rotation. They won’t necessarily capture the poster changes you made just before trouble started. Enabling the task doesn’t create an immediate backup, either. Its first run can take several days because of how Plex schedules maintenance. Inspect the actual backup files and their dates before assuming a recently checked box has protected anything. Before installing [B][URL='https://goldmidi.com/community/threads/plex-pushes-fixes-for-media-server-and-desktop-flaws.76841/']security patches for Plex Media Server[/URL][/B], stop Plex and copy its full data directory to preserve the artwork alongside the database. Waiting for the next scheduled database copy leaves those images outside that backup. Compressing the data directory into a ZIP or tar archive can make its many small files easier to manage. The destination still needs checking, especially if your backup script saves its output beside the files it just copied. Keep the backup archive outside the live Plex data directory. Plex can delete files and folders it doesn’t recognize during housekeeping. A ZIP stored inside that directory can therefore disappear even though you deliberately put it there for safekeeping. If you restore the scheduled database files, stop the server first and follow the paired restoration procedure for the library and blobs databases. You’ll need another source for [B]custom movie artwork absent from those backups[/B]. [HEADING=2]Local poster files give you a way to rebuild[/HEADING] If you still have the original images, you can make them available to Plex again as local movie artwork. For a movie stored in its own folder, place the chosen image there as poster.jpg. A shared folder containing several movies needs a different naming approach. Name each image to match its movie file’s base name, with the image extension replacing the video extension. One generic poster.jpg cannot identify several different movies in that folder. For a library using the Plex Movie agent, enable Use local assets in the library’s advanced settings. Keeping the source images beside the movie files also lets your media backup include them, provided it copies those images. Refresh Metadata on one affected movie after adding its local poster. This action checks for local artwork and fetches metadata for that item. Scan Library Files mainly checks for new or changed media, so repeating a scan isn’t the same repair attempt. Plex also accepts multiple local poster choices, such as poster.jpg and poster-2.png inside an individual movie folder. You can select the version you want through Plex Web. Keeping both images lets you change the selection later without having to find and upload the other version again. [/QUOTE]

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