I no longer "think" plex is destroying hard drives, - I KNOW it is and i can prove It

General Discussions
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https://forums.plex.tv/t/i-think-plex-is-destroying-hard-drives/377219/22

read with interest peoples take on this and i was sooo convinced i was wrong, ive gone on to destroy yet another drive - within months.

so ive now got a naked internal drive hooked up to a usb to sata converter - with nothing but plex on it - thats the program, metadata and media.

once ive plugged it in and its settled down, its silent - definitely not spinning up.
once i start the plex server however, it constantly runs up - for 15 -20 seconds, powers down fo 10-20 seconds then repeats constantly. - ive left it for hours and yes - it gets red hot
i turn off pms and after 30 seconds to a minute, goes silent again and cools down - i can faithfully repeat this experiment but have no wish to destroy further drives.

what the hell is going on???

server is a dell inspiron 13 5000 - with a 256gig ssd and 8 gig of ram the current drive under torture is a wd blue 750gig mechanical sata - connected to a usb to sata cable attached to a usb3 port

i love this program - but unless i can solve this - im not prepared to throw any more money at it. and im certainly not prepared to risk any more media files

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I think there is something wrong with power management on your system if the drive keeps spinning down after only ~20 seconds. Plex might be guilty of spinning it up for I/O, but from what you have said I don’t think you can pin this on Plex, that drive should not be powering down so quickly.

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To provide even more support for your case, you could run Resource Monitor, go to the “Disk” tab, and (assuming it is Plex) show the Plex process causing the reads/writes. It may also be insightful to see if it is reads or writes that is being produced to understand what Plex is doing that is causing the hard drive usage.

You can also use Process Explorer to see specifically what files a process has open handles, or using Task Manager per this link.

Not that you should have to do this, but it would give direct support and insight to your case.

I don’t run PMS on Win so I can’t research or verify…

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First of all, the title of your thread is misleading here!

Secondly, you seem to forget the name here: Plex Media Server and specially the part of the title named Server

So in short:

  • A PMS is always on, and constantly checks if online, and logs that to the log files
  • A PMS periodically test/scan the local network, for UNP devices, and logs that
  • A PMS runs scheduled tasks, in order to update media, ratings etc
  • A PMS might be generating thumbs of media, if enabled, which not only have an impact on HDD activity, but also on storage capacity

So basically, you forget that PMS is a server App!

And nope, it’s NOT destroying your HDD’s, it’s using them as it’s supposed to

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I can verify I’ve never spun down a hard drive in my life. I can also verify as all 7 of them sit happily spinning away 24/7 none of them are Red Hot.

If a hard drive gets Red Hot while spinning, that will make using it difficult - 'cause to work they have to spin.

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You’re running a server, which continuously accesses the drives.

Change your power settings to never spin down the hard drives.

Control Panel → Power Options → Change Plan Settings (for active plan) → Change Advanced Power Settings → Hard Disk → set to 0 minutes.

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When I think ‘Red Hot’ I think of those luscious little pork lips sausages - and this:

dustbunnyprime

Get some Red Hots and go on a Bunny Hunt.

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Just to add I use PMS with a 2.5" drive in a small form factor PC with an SSD. The mechanical drive is just used for media files, the OS and Plex is installed on the SSD. I have the hard-drive set to power down after a minute of not being used.

When Plex isn’t being used to stream anything, the hard-drive stops and is quiet for many hours. Occasionally the OS might spin it up, but it usually stays stopped until Plex is used to stream something. Being a laptop drive it is designed for many more start and stop cycles than a 3.5" drive, so it’s fine with several stops and starts a day.

If you have Plex’s database on a drive set to spin down, or have it set to write log files there etc, then the drive is going to be spinning up and spinning down constantly, as Plex will always be active write log files or doing something.

Also Plex can’t break a drive or make it run hot, but the drive may run a lot hotter if it is having to constantly spin itself up, as like anything, it takes a lot of energy to accelerate something up to speed, then when it stops, the drive breaks itself and that energy is then converted to heat.

Hope the info helps.

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