Yea this is crazy.
My boot drive in Windows has just two days of photo transcoder cash and itās 300+ GB. This just started being a problem for me this past week. Iām deleting manually and noticed thereās another Plex Server Update so Iām hoping now that I have space Iāll be able to download the server updateā¦lol.
This is literally ridiculous and they have to be getting bugged by many people.
I use plex server on Nvidia Shield (android) and i transferred the server to external drive. it works fine but i donāt know why this folder canāt move to the external drive too.
I Tried to clean the package library but this files still there and keep growning ever moreā¦
Never had this issue before on a 64GB plex VM, recreated it recently on a 32GB VM because I was using a RAM Disk as my transcode cache. But today Plex wouldnāt function because the photo transcode folder was taking up all the space.
I ended up expanding the VM disk to 64GB to fix the issue, but as others have asked we really need to be able to specify the location of cache folders through the UI as an advanced config option.
Iāve noticed the same thing. I still havenāt heard what the folder is even good for.
Itās the cache for your plex clients. So when you scroll your libraries via a plex client this is the images that display.
Its perfectly safe to delete which has been stated many times but itāll be created again via the plex server when a client connects and shows its content.
I just worked out why my Mac Mini M1 was fullā¦ 97GB PhotoTranscoder cache, currently deleting the 1.8M images so I can patch the OS.
Seriously, set a limit (size or time or both) or stop it from storing duplicate files.
i just came here after noticing this issue, when did this start??
Continuing the discussion from Huge size of PhotoTranscoder folder:
Does anyone know if this has been rectified? Iām currently invoking the Unraid Mover to clear out my cache drives (mirrored 120gb SSDs) in preparation for swapping to a larger 1TB NVME drive, and Iām watching the files the Mover is moving on my second monitor. Quite a few files in the phototranscoder folder, but it doesnāt seem to be nearly as out of control as others here. (~1,100 movies, maybe 1,000 TV episodes.)
Adjusting the file age, using deletion scripts, etc are all great for putting a bandaid on the problem, but they still donāt prevent the excessive wear on SSDs. There is absolutely no reason for Plex to maintain multiple copies of the same cached image, this entirely defeats the purpose of the cache in the first place.
I run the last version of Plex (as of today 1.23.6.4881) and the issue is still there.
Actually, I found out about it because the disk I use for my Plex database & cache was full which prevents Plex to start. I had to delete the cache to start it.
Now, every subfolder created by Plex (which is currently rebuilding the cache) is only 1 or 2 MB, so maybe they changed something because before it was 300/400MB each.
i foolishly (or not) decided to clear this cache myself then after then next scheduled maintenance all my manual collections were empty, lots of covers were missing, however the cache has not blown out again so thatās something.
My cache folder is growing at a rate of about 8 gigs per week. I keep having to add more space to the vmdk. Anyone know whatās changed recently? This is getting ridiculous
Yeah this is killing my SSD. I had this start up just recently too when my SSD was full. I thought maybe it was the DVR. Nope! I had 300GB in the phototranscoder cache all of a sudden. Has anyone contacted Plex with any success? I have to keep deleting and then it just builds back up again.
Well, sad to see this thread, but another case here with Plex Media Server running on Linux.
After checking the whole configuration, I couldnāt fix this issue by myselfā¦ well, I did, but by setting up a weekly cronjob that deletes all files and folders inside the PhotoTranscoder folder. However, itās only a workaround. As soon as you open the Plex App in Android or iPhone, Plex Media Server starts recreating the folder structure and files.
I hope we can get this issue fixed soon.
I was doing a backup of my plex container today and was kind of shocked how large it was since all media is mounted remotely. Come to find out large portion of used space was the PhotoTranscoder folder.
First result doing a google search of āplex PhotoTranscoderā brings this thread up!
So count me in on the list of people that would like to see a real fix for this (and not just a purge the cache more often). I havenāt done any tests personally but it seems like it is just duplicating existing files unaltered which doesnāt make any sense.
Hereās an observation from a modest system where I havenāt deleted the PhotoTranscoder folder. The oldest files are 33 days old; Plex deletes older items during maintenance.
As mentioned above, I use jdupes to hardlink duplicate files together.
The disk statistics are quite interesting:
Total size (du -hl) of all files: 5.7G
Total deduplicated (du -h) disk consumption: 2.7G
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I mount the PhotoTranscoder folder to a small RAM-disk. That way the writes donāt cause wear in the SSD. The devs should still fix the duplicate cache writes and expose a size limit parameter (or completely disable it).
echo ātmpfs /tmp/plex/PhotoTranscoder tmpfs rw,size=512M 0 0ā >> /etc/fstab
reboot
service plexmediaserver stop
rm -rf ā/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Cache/PhotoTranscoderā
ln -s /tmp/plex/PhotoTranscoder ā/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Cache/PhotoTranscoderā
service plexmediaserver start
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I unfortunately had to stop using Plex for photos and videos because of this. It was literally burning up 300GB until my 500GB SSD would run out of space. It just constantly writes all the time and Iād like my SSD not to fail. Even deleting files more often is not good because you still are allowing constant writes of your drive. Once there was space available, it just kept on writing again. So I abandoned Plex. Iāll keep an eye on this thread for a fix.
Coming here again still trying to solve this problem, filling up my Mac HD yet again, just found 160GB in the PhotoTranscoder, can we turn this off? is this library artwork or actual photoās? Iāll just stop using Plex for viewing photoās as my photo library is about the same size, why canāt it read the actual pics if itās this big? Oh just realised I hadnāt shared my photo library , jeez what is all this data movie cover pics?
Thatās what Iād like to know. I have no idea how big this directory would get if left unchecked. My SSD runs out of space before it stops writing. It is unreal. It is just supposed to be a cache. How can a cache get to these sizes? It just doesnāt make sense. I still have Plex not doing anything with photos/videos now so that my SSD doesnāt get all these unnecessary writes. I just canāt afford premature SSD failure.
