I have all my media stored on a portable hard drive. So my iMac is always on and my hard drive is always in the USB port. Is this the ideal way to run plex or am I supposed download each piece of media onto plex so my hard drive does not need to be attached?
I would not say that it is ideal to have your media on an external hard drive but it will work just fine as long as realize a few limitations.
- make sure your external hard drive is always mounted in the same location (I use linux not mac so not sure if this is an issue or not for you)
- are you using usb 3 or 2? usb2 will severely limit your ability to stream multiple streams. (this may or may not be an issue for you depending on what your needs are.)
- external hard drives tend to be a little less reliable (manufactures of hard drives tend to have lower quality for external hard drives)
that being said i have media on both external hard drives and internal hard drives. both will work
I have 7 external harddrives totalling 20TB attached 24/7 and all have been running for at least 2 years with no issues. The only problem I have ever had with a portable harddrive was one I dropped on concrete.
I use a 2TB USB HD, Have done for years, works like a treat with Plex looking at the various folders i have on there for content, 2TB HD are dirt cheap and if all else fails i do not loose my content.
I’ve got more than a dozen USB drives connected with zero problems.
I also have all my media on external hard drives for price reason. Never had any issues, also having USB 2.0 would not limit at performance level for streaming since it’s bandwidth limit is 480 mbps, It would be more when you do disk to disk transfer that it could take longer.
