Hello everyone, I bought recently the Plex Pass lifetime in the last sale and I have a couple of questions please:
Right now I am using a raspberry pi model 3 with the Raspberry Pi OS desktop environment and I had previously installed plex in there. My question is if for example I install Plex Media Server in there and I restore my SD card, if there’s a way to make a backup of my Plex or everytime I restore my SD card I have to create a new media server and create all the different categories.
The other question I have is if it’s better to use as an storage an extern hard drive, or use instead a cloud system like linode/google cloud/mega etc or some seedbox I’ve seen announced while looking information about this. I will have my Raspberry on most of the time but I don’t mind downloading some episodes/movies to watch them online, if that makes sense.
RE> Backing up Raspberry Pi Plex Media Server config
I’m not running PMS on a Pi but to ‘backup’ my SD card on my PiHole RPi 3, I use the SD Card Copier. I believe it’s installed automatically under the App Menu > Accessories section.
Pretty easy to use. Plug in a USB key drive (or USB SD card adapter with another SD card) of the same size as your SD card. Select the SD card under “Copy From Device” and the USB key drive under “Copy To Device”. Then press Start. It will take awhile but makes a clone of your SD card.
You’ll probably want to stop Plex Media Server so the databases are closed properly BEFORE you start this copy. Then restart it when you’re done.
I use this before I do any changes to my RPi so that if it goes bad I can easily restore it.
As for the other question, I’m a local storage guy. My internet has let me down too much.
I use a windows PC, but Linux is actually easier, all you need to do is keep a copy of your database files, preferences.xml, and to keep your media stored at the same mount points (to transfer plex between devices)
As for storage, cloud services have been know to be glitchy. Keeping them on local disks works best for me.
Thank you very much for your answer I wasn’t aware this existed on Raspberry and I have been using Raspbian for a while :D:D:D
Regarding the local storage, how long does an external hard drive may work well?? I am afraid if I have it all the time connected to the raspberry it can be broken in a year or two
Wouldn’t be a problem to have the RPI always on and connect the hard drive only when me or my family want to download something or get another hard drive to have an exact replica (some of the stuff I have download are pretty hard to find online since they are old and not well known)
I was thinking of using an external hard drive but I’m afraid if I have it all the time connected to the raspberry it can be broken in a year or two and wouldn’t be a problem to have the RPI always on and connect the hard drive only when me or my family want to download something or get another hard drive to have an exact replica (some of the stuff I have download are pretty hard to find online since they are old and not well known)
I still have to decide on that but most definitely will get and external drive of 2tb
I do something that most people here don’t (they tend to use raid for redundancy/backup) I use a 1:1 drive backup system. Most of my drives are 4+TB so spend ~200 on a pair of drives, use one actively, and have the backup drive mirrored any time you make changes. At this point I have 1-2 drives fail per year, but I get 4-8 years out of a drive.
Sorry because my knowledge in this is quite basic, a raid is like a NAS system, right??
I was thinking to use the 1:1 system too, I prefer to have an external drive connected with USB that something similar to a NAS that must be connected to the power all the time. I wasn’t aware there were 4tb drives, maybe I’ll get one of those as they say no matter how big is a drive you’ll always end up filling it hahaha
Sorry again but I have another question? What is exactly a 1-2 drive fail per year? It means that the media server wouldn’t read the drive or that the drive is broken and can’t be read anywhere?
I think I have a couple which are very old too, but I only use them like 4/5 times a year, it afraid me if I use them all the time if it can get broken soon tho
Haha 18tb might be too much space and too expensive for me now, I’ll check 2tb or 4 tb as much
I have 25+ drives currently, I typically add 2 drives at a time (primary + backup). When a drive that stops working, starts giving cyclic read errors, or other markers for failure is discovered I take it out of service, move its backup drive to primary role, and buy a replacement to use as the backup drive moving forward.
Because the backup drives get used less they tend to have longer life spans than primary drives. I also do that so that the backup drive and primary drive have some usage gaps to minimize the risk of dual drive failure.
RAID is a way of combining drives either direct attached to the computer, or via a NAS that make it appear as 1 drive, but if any single drive fails, data isnt lost. (different arrays could even survive multiple drive failures.
I have a set of backup drives that I refresh every so often (when I would hate to lose what I have gathered) but keep them offline in storage most of the time. My thinking is that the data doesn’t change that often so why keep the backup drives spinning in a raid mirror? The other thought is: we aren’t that concerned about being offline for a few hours or even a couple days. This isn’t mission critical. So, buy a replacement drive and then restore from backup drives.
The backup drives can be cheaper. No need for enterprise data center quality. You just need drive space.
I tend to refresh about every 6-12 months, but this is after growing my library to a decent size. Durning that early quick growth period, you might want to refresh more often. If you are growing slowing along the way, then again, refresh as often as you are comfortable.
Lastly, I used to run a raid mirror, but lost EVERYTHING to an electrical short. Offline drives are much safer.
