Plex Media server menu item missing from Plex app

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
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Server Version#: 1.32.1.7510 (smb)
Player Version#: 10.4.0.4843
nVidia Shield Pro 2019 Android version: 9.1

I am putting together a nVidia Shield Pro 2019 specifically to host PMS to watch movies/music etc on my sailboat for when I move aboard full time next spring. I have identified a horrific issue though which is caused when removing the USB media drive from the nVidea Shield. This basicaslly breaks the Plex Media Server requiring it to be un-installed/re-installed to get it working again. I have seen this same issue reported previously on this forum but the only temporary solution/work-around I have found is the re-install via the Google play store which wipes my library clean, so a real nightmare having to reconstruct this every time I need to unplug the USB drive. Iā€™ll start from the beginning to provide more context:

I originally setup Plex Media Server on the Shield using a usb pen drive for media storage. I also configured PMS to use the pen drive for library storage. It worked well until I needed to remove the pen drive to connect it to my laptop to copy on more media. Before removing the pen drive however, I went through the motions of stopping the PMS (from the menu option inside the Plex app). I then ejected the USB pen drive using the eject option under the Shieldā€™s Storage menu. But on re-inserting the pen drive, and after waiting for this to auto mount, then going back into the Plex app Settings menu, the menu item for PMS was no longer shown. I could see the PLEX MEDIA SERVER section heading on the Settings menu, but no PMS icon is shown below this so I had no way to start PMS back up.
I tried restarting the device with the pen drive attached, but still no PMS icon on the Settings menu in the Plex app.

To fix this, I ended up having to go into the Play store, uninstall PMS and re-download and install it from scratch. Of course this wipes the catalog data so you have to then setup libraries from scratch which takes hours to catalog all the media. But in doing this the PMS icon was restored to its usual position on the Plex appā€™s Settings menu, so all seemed good, and I assumed this was a one-off glitch. Oh, how wrong I was!

I then thought I had it all working, and considered it would be worth spending some cash on a decent SSD and also purchased a 27" monitor to get this ready as my full media system foir my boat. I placed some media on the new 4TB SSD (formatted with ExFAT) then attached it to the second USB port on the Shield alongside the original pen drive. I then went through the option to transfer the PMS library to the new SSD drive, and added the media in the folders on the SSD to my existing PMS libraries (using the plex.tv web interface). This all worked great. To tidy up, I then removed the folders from libraries which pointed to paths on the pen drive, and unmounted the pen drive before disconnecting it from the back of the Shield. At this point, PMS was working perfectly. I was able to access the PMS icon on the settings menu to stop/start the PMS service.

This is when the problem happened again! I needed to unmount the SSD to plug it into my laptop to add more media to the folders. To do this cleanly (so I thought) I stopped PMS through the menu option in the Plex appā€™s settings, and unmounted the SSD before unplugging it from the Shield. I added more media as needed, and reconnected the SSD back to the shield.

Once again in the Settings menu in the Plex app, the Plex Media Server icon is missing! So I have no means to start PMS, and really donā€™t want to have to uninstall PMS again and go through the whole library setup from scratch. This is very frustrating!

Does anyone know any way to get the PMS icon back so I can get the server started up? Or an alternative work-around to get the PMS server started without me having to reinstall it every time I want to disconnect the USB drive?

Iā€™d be eternally grateful for any help - I have spent too much time and money to give up on this and figure an alternative media solution for the boat. I have been using Plex for years now on Linux/docker with no crazy issues like this, and have been a plex pass subscriber for several years, so not having Plex when I move aboard the boat will be pretty devastating. Iā€™d be really grateful for any help offered!

Best wishes, Paul

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I have ended up uninstalling PMS and downloading/installing again, and once again the issue fixed. I found a post on Reddit about exactly this issue and apparently its very common - seems to be this way in cases where the ā€˜Storage Locationā€™ option has been chosen as the external disk (option is found in Settings, Plex Media Server, Storage Location). I now have mine set to ā€˜Internal (user accessible storage location)ā€™. This way I can access the database location on the Shield (over network as have storage available via smb) if I need to restore the database from backup at a later time. The default option here is ā€˜Internalā€™ (which you canā€™t access on a non-rooted device). Even though the database is now on internal storage, I donā€™t trust that I will avoid the same issue again, so I will make sure that if I need to disconnect the SSD drive in future, I will shut down the Shield first. Just in case!

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@pjamedia Iā€™m assuming you are on a 16GB Shield TV Pro - just be careful what you are putting on the internal storage so you donā€™t run out of space running that way. Databases are one thing but what about all the associated metadata that also needs to be re-created in the event of further ā€œunpleasantnessā€ which seems to happen fairly often on the Shield?

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@pjamedia Thank you so much for describing so clearly this issue that so many of us have been facing since a while now.

Iā€™ve had the PMS crash in exactly this same manner a couple of times now and was wondering why it was happening. After reading your post I now know that it is linked to disconnecting the external drive connected to the Shield.

Needless to say, this is extremely frustrating, and quite inexcusable given how longstanding and serious the issue is; especially so for Plex Pass subscribers. I hope the Plex team takes notice of this issue and fixes it ASAP.

PS - I feel very fortunate to have logged into the forums only hours after this thread was posted despite struggling with the issue for months!

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@StephenH Thatā€™s very wise advice Stephen. As a compromise, I have just added the 64GB USB thumbdrive back to the first usb port with my SSD connected to the second port. I have migrated the Plex Data to the thumbdrive using the option in the Plex Settings Menu. My thoughts here are that I am much less likely to accidentally pull out the thumbdrive causing the problem again given that it is one of those really tiny Sandisk ones which hardly protrudes from the back of the Shield at all. I checked the storage availability on the internal 16GB storage after reading your post, and there was only about 2GB free, so thanks for the advice.

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@Anjadekar The posts I saw detailing this issue in Reddit were a few years old and looks like Plex have done nothing so far to address the issue. I really wish they would but get a feeling they would probably drop support for PMS on the Shield all together before having to spend the effort to fix this really prevalent issue. I hope they prove me wrong, but not holding my breath.

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@pjamedia I didnā€™t know how big your library was but I figured that would be the case! Iā€™m in the slightly less common situation of having a Shield TV Pro 2017 model as my server, the one that originally came with a 500GB ā€œspinning rustā€ hard drive, which Iā€™ve replaced with a 500GB SSD via surgery - not for the faint-hearted. I think I have about 350GB free, so Plex is probably using around 140GB between its databases and all the metadata. My media is all on a Synology 5-bay NAS, no external drives are plugged into the Shield so Iā€™ve never seen any of the issues that come with external storage. I have an Apple TV 4K for playback duties when at home and a 16GB Shield for remote streaming when Iā€™m travelling. This has proven to be a good reliable combo and itā€™s getting on for 5 years I believe.

But the Shield, whilst still very capable, is getting a bit old and as @Anjadekar says, I wouldnā€™t be surprised to see Plex drop support for it soon. It has already started being left behind as Plex adds some new features - the Shield doesnā€™t get them all. The external drive thing I donā€™t really think is solvable. Itā€™s a nasty kludge that will always be risky and prone to blowing up.

If I was starting out from scratch now Iā€™d probably use an Intel-based mini PC of some kind running Linux as my server, hopefully fanless, and at some point in the next couple of years I expect Iā€™ll go in that direction.

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@Da_Green has recently posted an excellent thread with a detailed walkthrough on restoring a crashed/dead server. Hopefully it will be of help to the people on this thread. I will be trying my hand at a restore along these lines in the next few days and will report back with my findings.

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If the PMS menu is missing in the Plex application, itā€™s because the configuration has been skipped or corrupted.
I think the procedure should work, provided youā€™ve enabled backups.

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Yes, the procedure should work - with one caveat: you need to have changed the storage location in the Plex Media Server Settings menu to user storage (internal or external) in advance of experiencing the issue, as the default is system storage, which is not accessible (on a non-rooted android device) - this is mentioned in step 6 of that post. If set to user storage then you can locate the data folder in which the two data files reside. It didnā€™t work for me though as backups are only created every 3 days and I found this issue on day 1 :frowning: Instead I had to go the route of un-installing PMS (from apps, system apps menu in Shield), and installing from scratch from Play store, then configure from scratch.
My final configuration, where I feel the least likely to experience the issue again, is to have both a usb thumb drive inserted (where I configured as the storage/database location), and also the much larger SSD drive where my movies, TV shows etc are located.
If I eject and remove the SSD, no issue is caused. If I were to eject the thumb drive, I would see the issue again, but I am less likely to inadvertently pull the tiny thumb drive from the USB port by mistake.

One thing to note for those who have changed the server configuration location to an external drive, even doing this the internal/user storage is used for cache files - there seems to be no config option to move the cache to any external drive, so it will always consume internal storage.

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In my case, at the time of the crash, my PMS storage was on ā€œinternal systemā€.
I reinstalled a PMS, then changed the storage to ā€œinternal userā€. No problem for the rest of the procedure.

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