Kodi Community Forum

What is the best way to backup the music database/library?

My goal: In case of deletion, need for rescan for some reason by kodi, or a conscious re-install of Kodi, how can I get my music library back to what it was asap?

So sometimes, even though I do nothing new in my music library, when I choose update it starts re-scanning everything.

What this does is that it resets the artist icon and fanart, and it’s a pain since I use a lot of time to get them right.

So, to the initial question: What is the best way to avoid a need for rescan if I would delete my library i.e. how to back it up correctly?

What can I do to make sure that the artwork I had chosen previously will be chosen again if I have to import a backup?

And if I now need to re-scan everything, can I get the artist info and artwork without needing to scrape from the www? Will Kodi recognize the “artist.nfo” that is in the artist folder, and if missing, how can I ensure that there is an “artist.nfo” for all artists? And can I get the artist artwork, thumbs and logo into each artists folder automatically?

I really don’t care if there are many steps to do this, I am just tired of redoing it again.

I know there are a lot of questions here, and I’m sorry about that, I just want a be-all and end-all solution.

Thanks in advance.

Ps: I use Krypton on a Windows 10 htpc.

Hello @Exmaniac

Your question is not really related to Aeon Nox but a core question. I will move your post to the Music sub-forum.

It will help if you tell us which version you are using as v17 and below works very differently to v18 which has been through some major changes in the Music area.

I updated it directly after my post. It’s at the bottom.

However, the artwork is specific to the skin, not all skins work the same.

You could just copy your userdata/database folder to a backup location.  To get your music and art restore mymusic.db and textures13.db.  Typically (if you have updated Kodi in the past) and have multiple versions of mymusic.db, the one with the highest number (i.e., mymusic60.db for Kodi 17.6) is the one you want.  You probably also want to backup your userdata/sources.xml as well.  This assumes your actual sources are unchanged from when you did the backup, otherwise a library export might be better.   There's also a backup addon in the official Kodi repo to automate the process.

scott s.
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