Please any advice or questions welcome. I won’t go into detail and put people off trying to help.
I run Plex on a Windows 10 Pro server. i5 7600k. After about 12/24 hours Plex seems to slow right down. Library information and artwork take longer to load. Less responsive, playback doesn’t start as quickly etc. I have restarted the Plex service itself a few times and it seems to help in playback/transcoding responsiveness but navigating the library is pretty slow. Almost like a poor cache?
But if I restart the entire server it’s incredibly quick. Album art is almost instant, playback is better, and transcoding happens so quick it begins throttling (sloth mode).
I don’t want to have to keep rebooting, I shouldn’t have to. What could be slowing it down? My Plex server and metadata run on my OS SSD. My media is stored on WD RED Drives. Likewise on a fresh start up my server is incredibly quick.
Hey, thanks for the reply. I agree, it feels like Windows itself could be the cause. Fortunately I’ve already covered most of your suggestions. My server runs with very little excess fat on it, it only has what I need running. I checked all my processes prior with the process checking software, and my startup programs are absolutely minimal.
There is a definite performance hit when my Plex is running any scanner tasks, but as long as it’s left alone it sorts itself our fairly quickly. I just do not understand what’s causing it to become so laggy. Defrag/trims have been run frequently so I don’t think that’s it. It’s running 1 stick of 8GB GDDR4 RAM. It never really goes above 50/60% usage, but it’s a good call.
I have had a brief look in the Windows event log but nothing jumps out at me. Quite frankly I don’t know what kind of signs I’d be looking for…
My transcoding directory is on the OS SSD. I don’t know whether that has an effect or not. But again, the SSD is snappy I don’t get why it would be the issue. Still scratching my head with this one.
Sadly, no again. I’ve got a good cooler on it, everything’s in good shape where airflow is concerned… It’s driving me mad. I literally had to do it before. I was at a friends, going to watch something remotely. I logged into Plex, everything loaded pretty slowly. Playback did work, but transcoding was just about keeping on top of everything, maybe about 1.2x - 3.0x. Remotely rebooted my server, logged back in, did the same again and all the artwork loaded almost instantly while navigating, playback was instant and the transcoder literally jumped into sloth mode it was that quick. I feel like I’m going mad!
I’ve got Stablebit Drivepool keeping and eye on those and it seems happy. I’ll continue troubleshooting. If I ever find out the reason why I’ll pop it in here haha
I’ve identified that there is an issue with the transcoder after a few days. Server was up for a good 3/4 days before anything that needed transcoding wouldn’t playback at all. Inspecting the logs live, the transcoder was timing out, and eventually even dying. It was then unable to clean up after itself with permission denied… (No reason why). When I ended playback it through a few more errors too related to metadata. The entire time the transcoder directory produces 2 empty files, and no transcoding occurs. Restarted the server and everything ran like new, instantaneously. I might have to make a new post related to the transcoder errors I’m getting.
In relation to the speed of Plex in general, it’s not been too slow… Especially on the LAN. But it does work much smoother after a reboot. It’s not a deal breaker anyway, playback is the priority and right now the transcoder seems to be having problems after a while.
