Hey all, I currently have a 240g ssd and I want to add another 240g ssd. The one I currently have is running windows and the plex server, but it’s full. Is there a way to somehow start adding metadata on the second drive? Basically extend my current drive without having to format or raid it?
You can move ALL the metadata on the new drive, but I don’t think you can have metadata on 2 diffetent disks.
@LordK1 said:
You can move ALL the metadata on the new drive, but I don’t think you can have metadata on 2 diffetent disks.
yes you can move your whole plexmediaserver folder to another drive.
OR just move the other stuff that is taking up the space.
I for many many years have had C drive for the OS and D drive for data.
Currently run 120gb SSD as C drive with D drive being 2 or 3Tb standard drives for data.
You can sort of have metadata in 2 locations. You can move specific folders to the other drive and symlink them back to the original location.
C:\Appdata\Folder_L1\Folder_L2
move Folder_L2 to D:\NewAppdata2\Folder_L2
Make a symlink C:\Appdata\Folder_L1\Folder_L2 that points to D:\NewAppdata2\Folder_L2.
@MovieFan.Plex said:
You can sort of have metadata in 2 locations. You can move specific folders to the other drive and symlink them back to the original location.C:\Appdata\Folder_L1\Folder_L2
move Folder_L2 to D:\NewAppdata2\Folder_L2
Make a symlinkC:\Appdata\Folder_L1\Folder_L2that points toD:\NewAppdata2\Folder_L2.
How stable is that? Anyone use that method?
@“Terry Cinemas” said:
@MovieFan.Plex said:
You can sort of have metadata in 2 locations. You can move specific folders to the other drive and symlink them back to the original location.C:\Appdata\Folder_L1\Folder_L2
move Folder_L2 to D:\NewAppdata2\Folder_L2
Make a symlinkC:\Appdata\Folder_L1\Folder_L2that points toD:\NewAppdata2\Folder_L2.How stable is that? Anyone use that method?
Why would you do that?
@spikemixture said:
@“Terry Cinemas” said:
@MovieFan.Plex said:
You can sort of have metadata in 2 locations. You can move specific folders to the other drive and symlink them back to the original location.C:\Appdata\Folder_L1\Folder_L2
move Folder_L2 to D:\NewAppdata2\Folder_L2
Make a symlinkC:\Appdata\Folder_L1\Folder_L2that points toD:\NewAppdata2\Folder_L2.How stable is that? Anyone use that method?
Why would you do that?
Because I have 2 240 ssds and am running out of space on the first one.
Well as I suggested move OTHER data.
Unless you have a HUGE number of programs 100+ gb at least must be movies/pictures/music/data that can be moved .
Make your 2nd SSD DATA only
@spikemixture said:
Well as I suggested move OTHER data.
Unless you have a HUGE number of programs 100+ gb at least must be movies/pictures/music/data that can be moved .
Make your 2nd SSD DATA only
There is nothing else on that drive besides windows and plex server. I still have 30 gigs left but once I turn indexing back on it will go quick.
@“Terry Cinemas” said:
@spikemixture said:
Well as I suggested move OTHER data.
Unless you have a HUGE number of programs 100+ gb at least must be movies/pictures/music/data that can be moved .
Make your 2nd SSD DATA onlyThere is nothing else on that drive besides windows and plex server. I still have 30 gigs left but once I turn indexing back on it will go quick.
I want the metadata on the ssd. It loads faster on the clients
Well move PMS folder so its the only thing on the second empty SSD.
And delete thumbnails - I don’t have them and do not know why they are needed!
You must have a humugous library for your PMS folder to be that big. I have 3k movies 25k tv episodes , 10k music videos, 40k mp3 and my pms folder is 75gb and 1.5 million files!
@spikemixture said:
Well move PMS folder so its the only thing on the second empty SSD.
And delete thumbnails - I don’t have them and do not know why they are needed!You must have a humugous library for your PMS folder to be that big. I have 3k movies 25k tv episodes , 10k music videos, 40k mp3 and my pms folder is 75gb and 1.5 million files!
It’s the thumbs, and yes I love them. When I fast forward a movie or show and I can visually see where I am seeking. It helps a lot.
@“Terry Cinemas” said:
@anon18523487 said:
You can sort of have metadata in 2 locations. You can move specific folders to the other drive and symlink them back to the original location.C:\Appdata\Folder_L1\Folder_L2
move Folder_L2 to D:\NewAppdata2\Folder_L2
Make a symlinkC:\Appdata\Folder_L1\Folder_L2that points toD:\NewAppdata2\Folder_L2.How stable is that? Anyone use that method?
As long as you are not using network drives, it should be fine. I have my logs folder symlinked so I can get to them easier and not had any problems. I also symlink the plug-ins support folder (where the db file is) so I could point PMS to different databases by just changing the symlink instead of renaming or moving the files around.
@MovieFan.Plex said:
@“Terry Cinemas” said:
@MovieFan.Plex said:
You can sort of have metadata in 2 locations. You can move specific folders to the other drive and symlink them back to the original location.C:\Appdata\Folder_L1\Folder_L2
move Folder_L2 to D:\NewAppdata2\Folder_L2
Make a symlinkC:\Appdata\Folder_L1\Folder_L2that points toD:\NewAppdata2\Folder_L2.How stable is that? Anyone use that method?
As long as you are not using network drives, it should be fine. I have my logs folder symlinked so I can get to them easier and not had any problems. I also symlink the plug-ins support folder (where the db file is) so I could point PMS to different databases by just changing the symlink instead of renaming or moving the files around.
Another question. If it is basically just a shortcut, how would I get the metadata to start installing on the new drive? I basically need it to start filling the new drive since the old is full of metadata
Let’s be more precise here. There are several types of symlinks. A Windows shortcut is a symlink, it’s known as a soft link. This is basically a pointer to something and doesn’t really do anything outside of Windows File Explorer. For example, you can try opening the shortcut in notepad and actually see the underlying code. The second type is called a hard link. This is more like a mirror of the file and acts just like the original file. You can open it in the original program and save back to it just as if it were the original file. The advantage is that since this is not a real file, it doesn’t take up any extra space. This is what Plex uses for it’s metadata, so when you see PMS has taken up 100 GB of space, a lot of that might actually be the links which will appear to take up space, but in reality don’t. What you want is this hard link equivalent for folders called a junction. So by placing your original files in another location, you then create a junction in the original location that points to the new location. So now, when PMS looks and tries to read or write to anything inside this junction, it actually does it to the new location which is now on the 2nd SSD. It will still look like it’s in the original location, which is the magic of the junction. The only difference is that since this junction isn’t real, if you delete it, all it does is remove that magic link to the new location, not the new location itself. However, deleting anything within the junction will do the same to the actual location.
So in my example above, open a command prompt and CD to C:\Appdata\Folder_L1. You then type mklink /j Folder_L2 D:\NewAppdata2\Folder_L2.
@MovieFan.Plex said:
Let’s be more precise here. There are several types of symlinks. A Windows shortcut is a symlink, it’s known as a soft link. This is basically a pointer to something and doesn’t really do anything outside of Windows File Explorer. For example, you can try opening the shortcut in notepad and actually see the underlying code. The second type is called a hard link. This is more like a mirror of the file and acts just like the original file. You can open it in the original program and save back to it just as if it were the original file. The advantage is that since this is not a real file, it doesn’t take up any extra space. This is what Plex uses for it’s metadata, so when you see PMS has taken up 100 GB of space, a lot of that might actually be the links which will appear to take up space, but in reality don’t. What you want is this hard link equivalent for folders called a junction. So by placing your original files in another location, you then create a junction in the original location that points to the new location. So now, when PMS looks and tries to read or write to anything inside this junction, it actually does it to the new location which is now on the 2nd SSD. It will still look like it’s in the original location, which is the magic of the junction. The only difference is that since this junction isn’t real, if you delete it, all it does is remove that magic link to the new location, not the new location itself. However, deleting anything within the junction will do the same to the actual location.So in my example above, open a command prompt and CD to C:\Appdata\Folder_L1. You then type
mklink /j Folder_L2 D:\NewAppdata2\Folder_L2.
Ohhhhhh ok, now that makes sense. Thanks so much for the info I really appreciate it. Saved me from a lot of extra work!
Another option depending on your operating system is that you can combine the drives so they appear as 1 bigger drive.
Before you do anything do you know how big the META data directory is?
We might have better suggestions for you if we know it’s current size. Also do you generate preview thumbnails (think you said you do). In each library it’s an option called “Enable video preview thumbnails” under the advanced tab.
What operating system are you running?
@cayars said:
Another option depending on your operating system is that you can combine the drives so they appear as 1 bigger drive.Before you do anything do you know how big the META data directory is?
We might have better suggestions for you if we know it’s current size. Also do you generate preview thumbnails (think you said you do). In each library it’s an option called “Enable video preview thumbnails” under the advanced tab.
What operating system are you running?
I actually already did a symalink with media folder in PMS. It was 95 gigs. I moved that to the new HD and linked it back to the old one. Works perfectly fine. Thank you very much for the help though!
I’m glad you got it worked out but you might not have needed to use a symlink. Depending on your version of Plex (I’m on windows) there is an ADVANCED option under the server genenal tab “The path where local application data is stored”
All you do is create a new directory on the new drive such as D:\PLEXDATA
change the option mentioned above to now read D:\PLEXDATA
shut down the server
navigate into the Plex folders and copy/move the folder Plex Media Server to the new location so it looks like this
D:\PLEXDATA\Plex Media Server
Restart server
I have all my meta data on a dedicated 1TB SSD.
