Server Version#: 1.40.1.8227
Player Version#: Plex Web 4.125.1
Tuner Make/Model: HDHomeRun Connect Duo
Using XMLTV?: No
Channel number/Name: Any
Hey there, three years ago someone asked if it is possible to deactivate timeshift. People just asked that person, if there is any reason to do it and the topic got closed. I use Plex on my NAS that contains SSDs. running in RAID1 - a video stream from cable tv in HD have about ~15 Mbps, it means that 24 hours of watching TV results in ~1,3 TB of written data. There is a specific amount of data, a SSD can write before it breaks (TBW) - so that would mean, that the SSD would fail a lot earlier, when using Plex DVR.
Also: Starting the TV-Stream results in a delay of up to 5 seconds for some devices, that is a little bit annoying.
So the question is: Is there a chance to deactivate the timeshift functionality somehow or wouldn’t it result in less I/O since it uses the drives for buffering anyways?
The transcoder temp folder is always used to queue up data chunks for playback.
The only exception is when Direct Play is used as playback mode. But live TV is never Direct Play.
The best you can do is to add a “spinning rust” drive and divert the transcoder temp folder onto there.
That’s a pretty good idea. Since I do not have the chance to put a HDD into my NAS (2-bay and Synology doesn’t allow mixing storage pools containing HDD and SSD) I will try if I can utilize the USB 3.0 port with a stick and outsource the tmp-folder there.
After all, it’s more for the feeling I guess. My SSDs have a TBW of 2.5 PB - that would mean I can watch ~5 years 24/7 before the SSDs will break only from watching TV. But there are smaller consumer SSDs that have a TBW of 100 TB, that would mean watching DVR for 2 years every evening for ~3 hours would already break it. After all, SSDs with a TBW of 100TB are fairly cheap, but that’s not the point :')
Thanks for the input!
I will share my results here, if I manage to outsource the tmp-folder successfully.
Maybe there will be people interested into this in the future.
It’d be closer to 16 years, since the bitrate is in megabits per second, and TBW ratings are terabytes. Your original 15Mbps x 24 hours example is actually 162GB, which is still a lot of data, but much better than 1.3TB.
You’re absolutely right - I messed up with kb/s and kB/s when I checked the Input-Bitrate with VLC-Media Player. Now I measured and recalculated manually and 10 Minutes HD stream is 1134744 KiB → 1,16 GB. That means it’s more like 1,9 MB/s, not 15 MB/s.
Note on that: b = bit, B = byte - my mistake.
My initial calculation can be divided by 8 then.
In this case we do not have to worry at all - thanks for clarification!
But for everybody who is interested into outsourcing the Transcode folder anyways:
I put an USB-Stick into my NAS, then I stopped PMS, moved the folder over to the USB-Stick and created a symlink. It works perfectly fine.
