Relative Plex newbie here. I have Plex installed on 2 machines on my home network, and am in the process of upgrading one of them to serve primarily as a dedicated Plex Media Server. I will be installing a new 1tb nvme ssd, and am trying to decide on the optimal setup. I am starting over with a fresh windows install, and will also have PlayOn Desktop, avidemux, slingbox desktop, some other video and audio related programs, and Microsoft Office 365 apps on the computer. The computer is a Yoga 730 with 8 gb of RAM and 2 Thunderbolt 3 ports. I want to use some type of DAS with this, and plan to use (at least at the beginning) 2 WD Elements HDDs (1 4tb, 1 10tb). I’m not opposed to shucking the drives and putting them some type of enclosure if doing so can speed up access to the media files. Those drives collectively hold approximately 11 TB of media files. The Yoga 730 is connected via a USB3 hub with ethernet to my gigabit network.
I plan on installing Plex Media Server using the defaults then move the data folder per your instructions here. Would creating a separate drive volume of let’s say 150 gbs with only my Plex data folder (moved via your instructions) be the optimal way to go? Could I use Primocache or some other cache program to speed things up even further (maybe creating another separate drive volume to use?). The 8gb of RAM is so soldiered, so I don’t think I can use a ramdisk effectively.
I would appreciate any advice on how best to set up the computer. Thanks.
I took the liberty to move your post in its own thread – while you’re referring to use the procedure to move the data folder, your question isn’t mainly about that.
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As for your question…
If you install your Plex Media Server on the 1 TB internal SSD… why do you want to move the data directory to a different drive? The 1 TB SSD will give you more than enough space for the system to grow (way beyond your 11 TB storage of videos).
Two reasons. I like to try to keep my C drive in Windows lean as I can for backups, and I was wondering if there was a way to optimize performance (reduce buffering, etc. on the various Plex clients).
I suspected that. Any tips on how best to attach the WD HDDs? I have a CalDigit TB3 dock which has a number of USB 3.1 Gen 1 5 gb ports, a TB3 40gb USB C port and a USB C 10gb port. I don’t want to stripe the HDDs (been there, lost a ton of data 16 years or so ago when a striped raid drive failed). I realize the WD HDDs are limited, but SSDs for Plex media is not on my horizon.
Adding those drives into a different enclosure will again not do anything for your performance on its own.
You could argue that this would allow you to connect both drives to the TB3 port (which has more bandwidth to both discs than a combination of the other scenarios — if you will stream from both devices in parallel); then again you’ll need to stream a lot ox videos to even get close to that bandwidth and most likely it’s anyway beyond what each individual HDD offers as read/write speed.
TL;DR: just connect both drives individually to start with… if you want to change the setup for some technical/… consideration at some point of time you can still do that.
If you are wanting to separate your Plex local files I’d suggest getting a smaller SSD to use for that. Even a 120GB cheap SSD will have the improvements you get over a HDD (being improved random read seeking for small files). You won’t really, at this time, see a noticeable difference from the NVMe driver’s benefits over a SATA SSD. As far as your Media HDDs that’s more personal preferences, there might be slight differences in the different setups, but only noticeable to benchmark test, not users. 1 point of caution though, from my personal experience WD enclosures are not great. They have a stupid “Hardware Encryption” system that does nothing to protect your data, all it does is make it so that if the enclosure hardware fails you are unable to access the data if you move the enclosure, even to another WD enclosure. If you are using an enclosure I’d always recommend using a 3rd party one & test it by transferring a few files & seeing if it is readable via direct connection. Now your chances of running into that fault are small, I only know about it because I was one of the unlucky 1%, but I think it’s stupid to risk when enclosures are cheap.
Now about your server setup. I just did one myself a couple months ago, an old desktop with Windows & 8GB of RAM.
Some suggestions:
use portable versions of apps to reduce background usage as much as possible
go into your Windows Features & remove all features & apps you don’t plan on using
Don’t let Edge run ever. If it runs go in & clear all it’s data or else it’ll be running in the background always
Good tips. I already do much of what you suggest. I religiously use Ccleaner to clean my registry and remove unwanted apps, especially a lot of those Windows features and universal apps that I never use. I’ve been doing this on multiple machines for 10+ years and I’ve never had a Windows boot drive fail.
I have to admit that I don’t carefully curate my Plex metadata. I only have 3 or 4 other users at the most, and they would rather stream from Netflix, Hulu, etc. They use Plex as a last resort. Right now, the current small NVME drive on this Plex server points to two WD external drives attached to my Asus router for the Plex library. Since I want to directly attach the drives to this computer once I install the new NVME drive, would I be better off restoring my current Plex server configuration via Macrium Reflect, then deleting the libraries and letting Plex rescan the same data, but now at a new location (a D: drive and a E: drive), or just do a whole new installation of Plex. I think I am going to punt on installing PMS to any location other than the standard default location, so a restore of a Macrium Reflect backup is an option.
If you don’t have customizations you’ve set up I’d definitely recommend doing a clean install. Like if you’ve set custom artwork, changed the names of things, made collections or playlists I’d recommend doing a copy. I personally just copy the folder from your old server to your new one with the instructions in the previous post, either the OPs or mine, whichever setup you like better. Though if you’re running a registry cleaner you might be better off using my method as it makes no registry changes. In all reality the OP method should be fine as long as you don’t run it between an uninstall & a reinstall. But as I’ve said, I personally prefer a cleaner method with less chance for errors, so I’ll always say that one’s better, but a lot of factors go into it, & I’m sure there are disadvantages to my method that I don’t think about but which could matter in your setup.
My personal opinion that’s a better way. If you are on the same WiFi then using Plex lowers Net usage, But I personally have an account with all the Streaming Services except the “Premium” cable ones. I use Plex for stuff that isn’t available to stream & I have a physical copy of without a Vudu digital copy, or things that get watched frequently. On occasions I’ll download things like the Arrowverse shows because it’s annoying to switch shows between the like 12 they have that all crossover. With Plex I can create playlists of each year so everything is watched in order without me having to stop between each episode & lookup which show I’m supposed to watch next.
On the plus side it’s less work your server has to do & less bandwidth you are burning.
