I have Nextcloud 19 running in a Docker container. It is on an Odroid HC2 (arm64v7) running DietPI and I have a 4TB hard drive attached.
I want to migrate to MariaDB from SQlite, but before I do, I am wondering what would happen if it all went wrong and I had to start from scratch? The data files would still be on the external drive, but is there a way to get a new Nextcloud instance to recognize them?
I’ve looked at backing up the settings and DB, but that seems almost as dangerous itself.
I’d feel a lot safer if I knew a way to import existing files into a fresh Nexcloud install.
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Normally you have a backup and you know how to restore all. That is also a good strategy if your HDD craches 
perhaps in the next 5 minutes
But the questions in your case is only:
How many users do you use?
It is a problem to loose all public shares?
It is a big effort to add all users and make all shares new?
If not:
You can install Nextcloud 19 direct with MariaDB.
Use an empty data-dir.
Add all users again.
Login with no data and look all works find.
Then change the data dir to the old data data.
And then use “occ files:scan --all” to insert all files to nextcloud.
Finally you must reshare your folders and files with new urls.
important: make a backup of all data and your old database.
use “occ files:scan --all” to insert all files to nextcloud.
I think this is what I was looking for. Thanks. I’ll look at the occ documentation.
I am only using it for my personal use. There are no other users. But I have and use a number of computers that I want to have files available at.
Than i think it is the best way to reinstall Nextcloud and reuse the data-folder.
Please make a backup before starting.