Confirmation on How Plex Scans Libraries

General Discussions
1

Hey Guys -

I’m a long time Plex user who has about a dozen libraries containing about 35tb of media - mostly movies and shows. Needless to say, full library updates take a good bit of time and resources. Also, when media is added into library folders, it is already named properly with correct metadata.

I see libraries update frequently during the day when they shouldn’t plus it seems to scan much more than the changed folder. Due to this plus the fact that I’ve never really understood how the options for Library updating works, so thought I’d post.

In PMS, the Library Settings are the following - all of which I have enabled.

  • Update my library automatically
  • Run a partial scan when changes are detected
  • Update my library periodically (daily)

My Questions

  1. The only reason I have the 3rd setting set to update periodically is in case any changes aren’'t detected for whatever reason. It’s sdet to the max of Daily. Think this is nessesary?
  2. Other apps add 80% of media to folders but I have considered disabling these options and just having them trigger a partial scan after each addition. If above options were working correctly, this shouldn’t be needed though.

Either using the above or something else, what’s the most efficient way to keep things up to date with minimal resource usage?

I currently run the latest version of PMS for Plex Pass users (1.13.0.5023) on Windows 10 x64.

Thanks!!

2

depends on your setup.
if you have both the server and the storage on the same machine, automatic updates should do (settings 1+2). periodic updates are helpful if you use e.g. network storage or an OS which cannot monitor folders from an external drive.