Is anyone running Plex on Windows with more than say 4 drives? If so what storage system are you using? Something with redundancy or just a bunch of drives? Special RAID cards? Special file systems?
I use windows and have ā¦ A number of drivesā¦ my biggest issues with RAID is in the event of hardware failure rebuilding the array (controller, or host hardware failure). I use the mediasonic enclosures and use a JABOD configuration, along with a program to copy data to a backup version of the drive. Once I discover an issue with the primary drive, it gets removed, I promote the backup drive to primary, and insert a new copy of the backup drive.
Many users use this for their media drives. StableBit - The home of StableBit CloudDrive, StableBit DrivePool and the StableBit Scanner
(But donāt try to put your Plex data folder onto it ā it wonāt work.)
Yes, Iāve been using Drivepool for years and it works perfectly. I have a āmedia poolā of about 70 TB (not all of it used yet).
I have one enclosure with 4 drives in it, but the rest are just external drives, hooked up to my pc with a USB hub.
Iām just curious, how big is everyoneās Plex Data Folder? Compared to the archive.
If you have an older computer around you might check in to building a Unraid server for storage and you can run Plex on it too.
Just a note of caution, there have been common reports of unraid having issues with the sqllite database plex uses.
About 100 GB (for about 60 TB of media)
Iām running 14 media drives on a usb hub - about 60TB live storage. I have the backups also on the hub for the drives that are āactivelyā being updated (4 more drives). My remaining backups are set aside until I lose a drive. Total storage is about 122TB. It works and itās cheap. Iāve been doing this for ten years. I do get an itch every once in a while to upgrade my storage method, but the more my library grows, the more expensive that initial investment becomes. The only updating (beyond adding drives) has been to replace my server. Iām running a mini pc feeding up to a half-dozen simultaneous viewers. Iāve just began adding 2160p movies (direct play only) w/out issues.
Plex Data Folder is 107Gb (not running sonic analysis)
So many people sing praises of Drivepool. So much so that I tried to implement it twice this past decade w/disastrous results. Data would start trashing out - unrecoverable. To each his own.
For windows you can always use the built in storage spaces. Not as great as the Drive Pool from from WHS v1 but it works.
1 Like
Are those just individual drives in the OS?
I just checked mine and have 80GB of PlexData on about 5TB of media. Iām generating thumbnails and have also recompressed everything to about 1/3 itās original size.
I have never had any issues with my Plex Database on my Unraid server. Then again I have a NVME 1TB Cache drive I am using. I could see this happening if your not using a cache disk as Unraid is not really setup to be used with live data such as being used for databases without a cache disk.
Yes. Movies are G: thru M: TV is N: thru S:. They range from 3TB to 8TB drives Every drive has the same file structure: āMoviesā & āChristmasā with the alphabet sub-directories. TV drives have āTVā as the top directory, subdirectories are āOldiesā and āCartoonsā. The Active (getting populated) TV Drives also have a subdirectory called āCurrentāā¦ I have a folder on each drives that identifies the Identifity of a drive (i.e. ā.TV 06ā), so I never mix any drives up - especially when handling backups!
I keep watching for sales on those large USB drives to replace the 3TBs as they fail over time.
Would you mind sharing which hub you use? Iām deciding whether to keep expanding with individual external drives (Elements and Easystores) or get some legit WD Reds and throw them in an enclosure like a Terramaster in JBOD modeā¦
My one concern is would I end up with a higher power draw with a multi-bay enclosure, and would that be louder than the individual units I have now?
I use a Manhattan 28 port hub. Iāve used this hub since the beginning. I have replaced it once (I suddenly had ports failing on it) this past 10 years. Iāve had no bottleneck issues so far, but like I said earlier, I never see more than 6 pulling from it at a time - typically only 1-to-3.
One other issues Iāve dealt with is drives going to sleep. I used to use a keep-alive app that was always running. After a couple of years I stopped using it and just became patient for sleeping drives to wake up. I convinced myself that keeping the drives awake was contributing to an earlier failure.
Drivepool / snapraid user , been flawless for me
Iām using Windows 10 and using Storage Spaces built in with mirror config. You could also use parity config. I like it because if thereās enough free space and a drive fails, itāll auto redistribute content to get you back to having full mirror or parity. I have 6 drives in various sizes. Itās also easy to upgrade drives:
If you have enough free space you can āprepare a drive for removalā then remove it, and replace it with a larger drive and add the new drive to the pool. All while maintaining your redundancy and not having to resize any partitions or anything. This was more flexible than unraid when I was looking since you donāt have to have your parity drive >= largest data drive.
There are some tips on configuration of storage spaces and getting the sizes right to optimize performance, especially if you are using parity for redundancy: Storage Spaces and Slow Parity Performance - Storage Spaces War Stories
A few people have mentioned Windows Storage Spaces. Is anyone using ReFS on Windows Pro for Workstation on Storage Spaces?
Also, does Storage Spaces provide a speed improvement over a single drive?
Hardware:
- Intel NUC8I5BEH
- 2 x 16GB Crucial CT16G4SFD824A
- 1 x 500GB Samsung 860 EVO MZ-76E500B 500G
- OWC ThunderBay 8 JBOD
- 8 x 8TB WDC WD80EFAX
Software:
- Windows Server 2022 Standard
- PMS 64 bit
- NSSM
Configuration:
-
Windows Server installed
-
Drive Bay connected via Thunderbolt
-
Storage Pools created and initialised
- sp-media
- Uses disks 1-4
- sp-backup
- Uses disks: 5-8
- sp-media
-
Virtual Disks
- vhd-media
- Uses Storage Pool: sp-media
- vhd-backup
- Uses Storage Pool: sp-backup
- vhd-media
-
Volumes
- Drive: D:
- Uses drive: vhd-media
- Drive: E:
- Uses drive: vhd-backup
- Drive: D:
-
Media Folders
- āD:\ServerFolders\Moviesā
- āD:\ServerFolders\Musicā
- āD:\ServerFolders\TV Showsā
-
Plex installed and run as a service via NSSM
-
Media folders added as libraries
-
Plex and data folders located on drive C:
-
Media folders on drive D:
-
Backups on drive E:
-
PowerShell script to duplicate D: to E:
Iām using two storage pools in the same chassis to manage local backups.
The OWC Thunderbay 8 can be daisy chained, in the future Iāll add a second OWC with 8tb drives to turn the maximum size from 29TB to 61TB.
2 Likes
