Hello.
I run PMS on a 16GB Shield, with an attached USB HDD set as external. I have successfully set the "Transcoder temporary directory" to use the external HDD.
However, when using Mobile Sync to iOS, Plex is using the internal Shield storage at \shield\internal\Android\data\com.plexapp.mediaserver.smb\cache\Transcode\Sync+. As such, I am limited by the free space available, and I am unable to sync larger files as Plex gives the disk space warning and refuses to sync.
Is it possible to change the directory used temporarily for Sync? If not, developers, please consider adding this.
Thanks!
4 Likes
Bump. I am really hoping for a response from Plex on this.
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No. You cannot change the sync folder.
Thank you for the response. Is this something that Plex would consider changing? I would think that all users would want their temporary transcode folder for syncing to be in the same location as their temporary transcode folder for viewing.
I would like to bump this.
It seems silly that I can specify an external drive for temporary transcoding for immediate viewing, but not for syncing.
I would really appreciate a response to this.
Currently there is nothing in the UI to allow for this. However, there is a workaround if you really want to do this.
The “Sync+” folder is just a regular folder. There’s nothing special about it. You can create a symlink and point it to any other folder you want.
How does one go about creating symlinks on a Shield? I googled it, and am no wiser for having done so.
Oh sorry. Forgot this was for the Shield. You can’t do this on the Shield.
@MovieFan.Plex said:
Currently there is nothing in the UI to allow for this.
Is there any chance that Plex could add something in the UI to allow for this?
With this issue, I am unable to sync any source files that are larger than a few GB.
I know the devs are looking to allow moving the entire Metadata folder, but I don’t have any details.
That too would be helpful, but I don’t expect that that would help with this situation.
So… is there any chance that Plex could add something in the Shield UI to allow for this? Or alternatively, to automatically use the temporary transcode directory for syncing?
Sorry, when I said the metadata folder, I meant the entire PMS folder where everything is stored, which would also include the transcoder and sync folders.
I just want to chime in here because I’m also having the same issue. I’m unable to sync any files because plex says I need more than 10GB internal storage (not possible on 16GB shield with basic apps and library).
Agree with the suggestion of using the transcode temp folder, or relocating the entire PMS metadata folder - whichever can be done faster!
Sigh. This is never going to happen, is it? 
Ugh. Just saw today that you can move all of the whole Plex metadata to an external drive. Yay!
However, this problem persists. sigh…
@kikeminchas said:
Just did the move to a USB stick mounted as external storage and it worked flawlessly. Nice!
Now, I set up the temp transcoding folder to the USB stick and that also worked without issues, I can see the transcoding sessions being created/deleted. However, it seems the sync transcodes are still trying to be done in the Internal storage? Is this expected and there is anyway to change it? Obviously, this makes the Sync feature unusable on the Shield. I was hoping the Sync folder would also be moved to external storage (there is a cache folder there after all) but this is not the case 
Log:
May 19, 2018 17:16:49.991 [9235] WARN - Low disk space: 9.75GB source file, 11.05GB capacity, 5.63GB available on "/storage/emulated/0/Android/data/com.plexapp.mediaserver.smb/cache/Transcode/Sync+/20462817/d3"
Yeah, it would be nice if some dev could confirm if there is some technical reason for this or if we can expect it to be fixed on a future release…
If you move your Plex data folder, that should also move the sync folder. Is this not working for you?
Yeah, that sounds logical but it is not the case unfortunately. Plex is still trying to sync using internal storage. For the rest all my data, including transcoder temp folder, is on external storage now.
@“MovieFan.Plex”, could you confirm with development if this at least expected or there is some technical limitation that prevents the sync folder to be also moved to external storage? thanks!
