So, some of us have big TV show libraries, and as you know, the bigger the library, the longer it takes to scan the various folders, populate files, and populate metadata. It takes longer for me now because my TV show library is just short of 15TB. I think adding a TV show feature where we can disqualify TV shows that are no longer airing from being scanned by Plex, thus speeding up the time it takes for Plex to scan the files, folders, and metadata. It would make a big difference on larger libraries.
I’ve a mid sized TV Library, 600 shows with over 25k episodes and it’s takes approx 10-15 seconds to scan my drives & folders when I add it new media.
So, how is your media named? Having media correctly named and within season folders can significantly increase the speed and performance of the scanner which is why I mention it.
In my experience, there is also a huge difference in scan time between the old and the new agents/scanners. Particularly, if your media is hosted in the cloud. Once I switched, my overall scan time went from more than two hours down to just five minutes.
I like how people automatically assume I’m using Plex incorrectly or not naming files properly lol. I have a crap ton of content spread over multiple storage drives. The scan time only increased recently because I added a lot of content to the library, which was much smaller before and scanned very quickly.
My apologies. I am probably using the old scanner. I thought I was using the new one but if your library is that large and it still scans faster than mine, clearly that’s not the case.
On a side note, I would love to know what you use to host your cloud server. I am looking on expanding mine much more but right now I am running mine on a PC and am limited by how much storage I can purchase. You can PM me the info if you choose to share, or post it here, up to you.
If your using the legacy scanner then that is the reason for your poor performance. That scanner is no longer being developed and as far as I can tell not getting even bug fixes anymore. It will likely get removed at some point in the future.
The new scanner is called Plex TV Series (see screenshot) and I’d highly recommend moving to it.
However, it has some differences in comparison to the legacy one so best to test it out.
BTW… I did not assume you used plex incorrectly. I asked some simple questions and provided information in the hope of helping!
I’ve been using OVH for the past five years. A little pricey, but worth it if you want a capable dedicated server. On the storage side, all my stuff is in Google Drive.
