Hey, I don’t have a dedicated system for Plex, right now I’m just running off a spare hard drive in my main gaming PC. I’ll probably go the NAS route eventually, but in the meantime, my 4TB drive is almost full and I’m looking for an upgrade. I was debating one of these:
You will find WD Red and Red Pro are the defacto standard for NAS usage.
The drives you’ve selected are NAS-rated drives.
Seagate drives historically do not last as long as WD drives. No idea why but that’s how it is
WD Red gives 3 years warranty.
WD Red Pro gives 5 years warranty
Their advanced RMA process is smooth as silk. (I"ve only needed it once when the 4TB Red first came out)
Be advised, If you setup the NAS as a RAID, the contents of the drive will be erased while the drive is integrated into the RAID set.
Most NAS vendors require they initialize the drive even if free standing (JBOD). This is equally destructive to anything stored on it. Typically only USB media is imune from forced (re)partitioning / formatting
Also as you step forward in a NAS, BTRFS should be avoided. EXT4 should be used (override the BTRFS default)
The major Linux distros (Ubuntu & Redhat) have stepped back from it and won’t continue development of it (RAID-on-RAID makes no sense)
It’s horrifically slow and unacceptable to most for PMS use
Thanks! Would the WD Red work alright for the method I’m using right now (non-Plex-dedicated gaming PC) or would you recommend I go with something else until I do eventually go the NAS route?
