07-18-2025, 04:20 PM
Thanks for reaching out and explaining what happened. This is a really common point of confusion when running Plex in Docker, and it sounds like you’ve already set yourself up with the right idea by using mapped /config and /data folders.
To clarify, the key to updating Plex in Docker without losing your claimed server and settings is making sure that your /config path (where Plex stores all its metadata, library database, settings, and claim info) is persistent and correctly mapped to a folder on your NAS storage, outside of the container. From your message, it seems you already have a /Configure folder for this purpose — just double-check that it is the one actually mounted to /config in your container definition.
When you redeploy or update the container, Plex itself sees the persistent /config and continues where it left off. If you update by completely deleting the container and not re-mapping /config, you’ll lose everything and have to re-claim.
So here is the best practice:
• Always use a persistent /config mount pointing to your NAS.
• Stop the container.
• Pull the updated Plex image from Docker Hub.
• Start a new container using the same /config and /data mounts as before.
If you’re using docker run commands, keep the same volume mounts. If you’re using docker-compose, it’s even easier — just do docker-compose pull and docker-compose up -d, and the updated image will start with your existing configuration intact.
To answer your specific question: no, simply stopping and starting the container does not update Plex. You need to pull the updated image and restart it. But as long as the /config folder is properly mapped and kept, your server will come back exactly as before.
To clarify, the key to updating Plex in Docker without losing your claimed server and settings is making sure that your /config path (where Plex stores all its metadata, library database, settings, and claim info) is persistent and correctly mapped to a folder on your NAS storage, outside of the container. From your message, it seems you already have a /Configure folder for this purpose — just double-check that it is the one actually mounted to /config in your container definition.
When you redeploy or update the container, Plex itself sees the persistent /config and continues where it left off. If you update by completely deleting the container and not re-mapping /config, you’ll lose everything and have to re-claim.
So here is the best practice:
• Always use a persistent /config mount pointing to your NAS.
• Stop the container.
• Pull the updated Plex image from Docker Hub.
• Start a new container using the same /config and /data mounts as before.
If you’re using docker run commands, keep the same volume mounts. If you’re using docker-compose, it’s even easier — just do docker-compose pull and docker-compose up -d, and the updated image will start with your existing configuration intact.
To answer your specific question: no, simply stopping and starting the container does not update Plex. You need to pull the updated image and restart it. But as long as the /config folder is properly mapped and kept, your server will come back exactly as before.