External Drive Limitations?

Plex Media Server
1

Hey Everyone,

(If this is not the correct area to ask questions, I apologize in advance)

I’m upgrading/rebuilding my Plex Server and the case I am moving to does not support 3.5" drives. Because of this, I will be using an external drive enclosure (https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/tr-004) and it will be connected to my server via USB Type-C. With that said, if I install four 14TB WD RED 7200 RPM drives in a RAID 10 in the enclosure, will this be a bottleneck? I typically have ~4 concurrent users streaming – some of the media being 4k.

Thanks in advance!

2

USB-C data transfer rate (according to my first google hit) about 10Gb/sec, that is unlikely to be your bottleneck. My NAS on 1Gb/sec network is not my bottleneck.

I have QNAP TS431-P, it is a NAS rather than a DAS, looks to be in the same case though.

Personally I prefer NAS to DAS, it just gives more flexibility as Plex media is not the only thing stored there.

I’d look at both options and work out which is best for you.