Hey everyone,
Hope you’re all going well!
Quick question; my new NAS is coming in a few days time. When I remove the old source that pointed to the old NAS from OSMC, & then create a new source that points to the new NAS, would this mean that I lose stuff like; videos that have been marked watched, history, etc etc?
If I would lose everything like watched history, is there a way to… not lose this?
Thanks in advance & as always stay safe! 
If you are going to start with a completely new library then you can export the library to individual files and that will include the watched status. You can then add into an advancedsettings.xml file the option to import watched status before scanning in your sources again and this will import your watched status when it scans the files in.
Another option would be to use Trakt to sync your watched status to the cloud.
If you wanted to skip the entire starting over from scratch thing, and you were planning on making your file structure on the new NAS the same as your existing source/s, then you could just use path substitution and redirect from the old paths to the new.
Hey darwindesign,
Thanks for the post.
If the file path structure on the new NAS was the same as the old NAS, apart from the IP, I wouldn’t have to edit any XML files would I, simply copy the content to the new NAS… if I’m understanding correctly ahah.
Which way do you think would be the easiest for a complete novice? (apart from Trakt)
I think Trakt would actually be the one that would be most prone to something going wrong and it would probably be my least preferred option.
Having Kodi export NFO files is pretty straight forward and easy but you are still doing a bunch of work that is really not necessary setting up a new library from scratch.
My preference is the path sub. You can change more than just the IP address, you just would not want to go redecorating below your source folder levels. I think my guide I linked to should make this pretty easy to figure out. I also think that changing zero things inside of Kodi and adding a few lines to one file outside of Kodi is the easiest, novice or not.
Why not just make the IP also be the same after the switch?
I’ve been using trakt for several years and can’t recall ever having an issue with it maintaining my watched status across multiple devices. Additionally, I don’t recall more than a couple of support requests on forum here for trakt related issues. I’m not familiar with the official trakt addon support thread on the Kodi forums though. I will note that we see support requests for YouTube addon issues at least a couple times a month…
I’m not trying to say that Trakt doesn’t, or wouldn’t work. I’ve been using Trakt for quite a while myself. The problem I envision with that route would be it not picking everything up. I’ve seen quite a few times where shows don’t pop up on my calendar and I have to refresh the shows info to get them to sync. I’ve even had a few times where I had to remove a show, sync Trakt, then scrape the show again before Trakt picks it up. There can also be issues with older shows where Trakt’s database is not in agreement with episode order and I think this is a potential problem area as well.
Sure, no solution is perfect for every use case and folks may have different experiences in their specific situations… Just providing my experience and my observations regarding support requests on this forum in respect to use of trakt.
@fzinken, that certainly would be the easiest and quickest way! Just so I’m not missing anything; I simply make the file structure the exact same on the new NAS, remove the old NAS from the network, and make the IP of the new NAS the same as the old one. I wouldn’t have to do anything else on Kodi’s side, like rescanning or something?
Thanks again everyone for their input!
Kodi’s database just stores absolute paths so if you can make your new NAS look to Kodi the same as your old NAS just by matching the IP address, then that is all you would need to do and there is nothing to adjust in Kodi at all. For example if you have a source setup at smb://192.168.0.10/movies and you scan in a movie it will get stored in the database as smb://192.168.0.10/movies/movie_name/file_name.mkv or something to that effect. As long as the file is in this same path with the new machine then Kodi doesn’t care.
Where people normally get themselves in trouble in this type of situation is they edit their existing sources in Kodi to match their new file share. That is almost never something you want to do.
Yes that should work. I may just would give the old NAS a different IP instead of removing it so you can easy switch if you have an issue.
Also important that the share names are the same not only folder structure.
Well then, that sounds pretty easy. I’d be able to manage that. I’ll also make a NFO export, just in case.
I’d be completely lost without everyone’s help on the community. haha Thanks again everyone!
If your doing this to cover the eventuality that you couldn’t get the file paths to be exactly the same then the caveat here is that you would want to make that library export the separate file type. The single file export includes the file paths so it wouldn’t help you out if these paths end up changing.
Hey again guys,
So I’ve almost set up the new NAS but have encountered an issue when trying to use path substitution.
After making the IP address as well as the folder structure the same. However, I kept getting this error “Operation not permitted”
After that I had tried the path substitution method, but still the same error… 
If anyone might have any ideas or thoughts, would be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks in advance! (ps. attached is a screenshot of my advancedsettings file)
That is a different issue, search the forum for that error you will find several posts. Most likely it’s a password issue or it could be a protocol version issue.
How was telling Kodi to substitute from/to the exact same path suppose to change anything?
If you take a look in ~/.kodi/userdata/passwords.xml that will show you the username and password that Kodi is trying to use. If that is not what the new NAS is configured for, then you can either add those credentials to your NAS, or alternatively edit the passwords.xml file with credentials the new NAS is configured to use.
