How well does Plex work with an external hard drive

I have an LG 55LW5600 TV being delivered next week and am hoping to use Plex for the first time. I’ve set up the Media Manager fine and have just been browsing these forums and reading up on my TV. I’ve found several complaints of people not liking Plex and Youtube videos where people show it lags or renders too frequently for things to be playable for them. I don’t plan to stream Netflix or Youtube but really want to use the movie files I have on my PC. I was thinking of buying an external hard drive but wanted to know if anyone would recommend against it. Would the videos play/load any slower if connected via a USB hard drive rather than my main hard drive? I’m also on Vista and have only 2 gigs or RAM, would upgrading make a difference? And how big of a role does internet speed play? Thanks for any thoughts!

I currently have all of my media on an external USB HD that’s connected to my HTPC. I’ve had no problems with slow access or buffering, even when serving HD content.



Jeff

Hi all.



I have a problem with this. The PMS don´t detect the films that I´ve in my external hard disk connected via a USB, but if the films are in C: PMS detect it and running perfectly. The OS is XP with SP2. Any solution?


HI,

Does it detect the media on the USB if you do a deep scan?

http://wiki.plexapp.com/index.php/PlexNine_PMS_MediaManager#Deep_Scan


No. It doesn´t. :(

Wow. Yet another showstopper for Plex. Plex does not work with any usb connected drive. Been hacking on this for a couple days. I have a screaming fast Raid array via USB 3.0

I was googling for a solution here. Found this thread from 2012... Unanswered. Run far away from Plex.

I don't plan on running away from Plex anytime soon. External USB 3.0 hard drives work great with Plex and Windows 7, 64bit. 

Wow. Yet another showstopper for Plex. Plex does not work with any usb connected drive. Been hacking on this for a couple days. I have a screaming fast Raid array via USB 3.0

I was googling for a solution here. Found this thread from 2012... Unanswered. Run far away from Plex.

Plex doesn't care less if it is USB or whatever, it is all just disk to Plex.  Perhaps you should give some info on your system and ask for help rather than making incorrect assumptions.

2 Likes

He should just shoot himself for being a stupid troll. There’s never been any issues with external drives.

1 Like

Wow. Yet another showstopper for Plex. Plex does not work with any usb connected drive. Been hacking on this for a couple days. I have a screaming fast Raid array via USB 3.0

I was googling for a solution here. Found this thread from 2012... Unanswered. Run far away from Plex.

An absolutely ridiculous comment. I have zero problems using an external drive with my Win 7 based Plex server. Sounds to me like you have issues with your own system. Plex is fine...

1 Like

I'm running all my media off an external 500 gig usb2.0 dive on win7... works flawlessly... and I am always disconnecting my drive..

I have a 4 disc enclosure (non raid) connecting to a ESXi 5.1 plex windows 7 host. USB works fine.

I agree. Plex is not the issue. I have over 24 TB of external hard drives plugged into my Mac Mini using both FireWire and USB 3.0. No issues at all. Not during buffering or scanning.

No problem here using 1 TB external drive. I also disconnect and reconnect my drive a few times and continues to work.

I am running all my content from a 1.5 TB USB external hard-drive. (Windows 7 64-bit / PMS 0.9.7.26) I have had zero issue thus far...

I can even disconnect the drive and reconnect (to a new USB port) and things still work!

Greatest program ever invented--PLEX!!!

I'm running Windows 8 and I have 3 external USB drives that hold all my Plex media.  I have no problems what so ever.  Plex sees them just the same as if they were internal drives.

No drams with an external drive here - I have a 3TB drive USB2 and never had a real drama yet. For some reason my PC decided one day to allocate it a different drive letter (it suddenly went from being I: drive to J: drive) but after correcting this there have been no further issues. Cannot complain in the slightest!

Does the external hard drive need to be connected to the computer that the server is on when streaming to other devices

Just wanted to backup has been stated by others. Plex has ABSOLUTELY no issues with external drives. I am running USB 3 / USB 2 (SD) and esata drives with not one hiccup.  

There MAY be an issue with network speed when you hook to external drives as it is a two way street. The movie must be retrieved by the server, maybe trans coded depends on your settings, then sent to your device. I myself have done that without issue. Running a giga network with quality wiring and switches.Hopefully that helps.

:)

1 Like

I also have no issues with external drives.  I have 4 drives totaling 7Tb and they all work fine.  PS Love Plex.