Intermittent issue with Mapped drives not accessible

Plex Media Server
1

Server Version#: 1.26.2.5797
Player Version#: 4.76.1

I have been running the same plex server for the better part of 6 years and suddenly in the last week i am having an issue mapping to my shared drives which store my media.

This issue seems to occur and then suddenly resolve itself for a while, What i have noticed when the issue is occuring, If i try to “re-add” the library, the share drive does now show up as an option

The shared drive is mapped on my windows server and i have full permissions to open, delete move files etc. My plex is running on Windows 10 & my share drive is from my NAS running Server 2019

When i open this library in plex, all the metadata is there but i get an error trying to play any fikes. As i test i tried to map the drive again and noticed plex cannot see any mapped network drives.

I read somewhere plex has issues if its installed as a service, is there a way i can chck/confirm this?

2
  1. mapped drives are always only valid in the context of the Windows user account who mapped them to the drive letter. When doing this, I urge you to duplicate the windows user name and password of the Plex server machine on the file server – i.e. do not rely on Windows storing the access credentials for you, if they are different.
  2. Plex server needs to be restarted if there is a change in drive letters ([re-]mapping a drive, or [un-]plugging an external drive).
    It has no way of reacting to a change while it is running.
  3. When running Plex server as a service, the user logon script (which, among other things is restoring the drive mappings of the user) is not performed. Therefore no mapped drive letters can be used. You’ll have to use UNC paths instead. With the caveat mentioned in 1)
  4. never, ever run Plex server with “Run as Administrator”. This can/will mess up the access permissions of the plex data folder and prevent proper function when trying to run as any different user than Admin.
  5. hardware transcoding support cannot be used while running as service
3

The issue i have is that its intermittent, Is there a way i can confirm if its running as a service?

4

That is what I wrote about in 1)
Storing access credentials is not reliable.

Also, when running as service, you better set the startup mode of the Plex service to ‘delayed’. Just to give Windows more time to get the network stack ready.

It is also very important to have both the Plex server and the media file storage on fixed local IP adresses.

Since both machines are Windows, I strongly recommend you to disable “power saving” mechanisms in their network adapter properties. Because these are quite often implemented poorly and lead to lost packets when engaged.

Win10_ethernet_powersave
Win10_ethernet_powersave1280×800 39.5 KB

“Service” only happens if you explicitly installed additional software for that purpose. The normal Plex server installation executable cannot set up a service.