I have an Intel NUC running Plex Media Server on Ubuntu with a single external HDD plugged in to the back.
90% of the time it works flawlessly, streaming 3 movies at a time without a fault. However, there have been occasions where the media on my Plex server has been “unavailable” (i get the little red unavailable badge next to the movie title). This is obviously an issue with the mounted drive as I still have complete access both internally and externally to the Plex server.
Has anybody experienced anything like this before or knows why this would be happening? This issue hasn’t happened for a while but has happened a few times in the last year or so. A reboot is required to fix the issue which is annoying when I’m trying to watch something from a remote location.
@ChuckPa said:
It sounds like your mounted drive is going to sleep (power save) and not waking up.
This does sound likely. I am using a portable external drive i should add, so there is no additional power to the drive, just power via USB. Does this add more weight to your argument above?
That does make the situation even more plausible. Some systems put external USB drives to sleep when not in use. My Synology NAS does it even though the NAS is set for 100% up time, no HD sleep. External, USB-powered drives are the exception in the Synology world. It is possible this is true everywhere.
Edit: Afterthought, it might be the external USB’s firmware spinning down and not spinning up in the time PMS will wait for the drive. I’ll experiment with that.
