Server Version#: 1.41.0.8994-f2c27da23-x86_64
Player Version#: 4.139.0
<Waited over 10 seconds for a busy database; giving up.>
Keep getting this error when scanning for new content on a network drive. Just reinstalled Windows 11 to rule out any issue with my previous install. Same issue with fresh install. The network drive works fine outside of plex. Restarting machine is only way to clear the error.
Also, I have disabled all scheduled tasks and thumbnail/chapter creation tasks.
Clarification: is your Plex data folder on a network drive?
Or are only the actual media files on a network file share?
How much free space is left on drive C:?
Thank you for your response. My Plex Data folder is on a local non-OS drive. Plex Server is installed on my C: drive which has 155GB free.
What exactly does that mean? A regular hard drive or SSD? Or something else?
This happens either if the plex server is busy doing other things.
Did you enable one or several of the various “analysis” tasks during library scans? If adding a whole library at once, it is recommended to disable them all initially.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200289526-library/
Only after things have settled and you only add a few items at a time, you are free to re-enable them to be executed right after library scans.
Another possiblity is that the database file is damaged.
See if using this batch file is making a difference (Stop Plex server beforehand): PlexDBRepair/Windows at master · ChuckPa/PlexDBRepair · GitHub
Third: make sure that you don’t perform several library scans at once.
Which means if you have enabled periodic or automatic library scans, don’t trigger them manually or let external tools trigger them (e.g. by any of the *arr apps).
If set to periodic, don’t pick periods which are unnecessarily short. Particularly if your library(s) are huge.
And fourth: stick closely to the recommended media organization. Particularly to these rules:
Another tip, which can sometimes help keeping things snappy: exclude the Plex data folder and the Plex transcoder temp folder from your anti virus scanner
What exactly does that mean? A regular hard drive or SSD? Or something else?
It is a regular hard drive
"Did you enable one or several of the various “analysis” tasks during library scans? "
Every option under “Library” and “Scheduled Tasks” are disabled except “backup database every 3 days”
See if using this batch file is making a difference (Stop Plex server beforehand):
DONE
Third: make sure that you don’t perform several library scans at once.
Im only running one initial scan for an entire library. (Scheduled tasks are disabled)
Also, I am now running a fresh install of windows 11. (I wanted to rule out any chance my previous OS install was causing the problem)
one subfolder per movie
one subfolder per tv show, another sub-subfolder per season
don’t add “naked” drive letters to a Plex library. Always point it to a folder.
CONFIRMED
Another tip, which can sometimes help keeping things snappy: exclude the Plex data folder and the Plex transcoder temp folder from your anti virus scanner
DONE
Still having same problems unfortunately.
How large is your media collection? (number of items, not storage space occupied)
How is the this hard drive connected to the computer? (type of data conmnection)
I have 7000 tv seasons on the network drive. The initial scan started 2 days ago and only 1500 seasons were loaded. It says it is still scanning, but nothing has been added since the morning.
The 16TB hard drive is connected via SATA cable to the motherboard. (I have audiobooks and music on this drive and they appear to have loaded into plex completely).
Adding a bit more info:
Plex has been stuck on scanning the same movie for hours now. I checked the movie in question and it plays fine on VLC player. I cant understand what would make plex stuck on one file for so long?
Also, have been seeing this error in logs:
HttpClient/HCl#4e7] HTTP error requesting GET http://192.168.1.254:42749/rootDesc.xml (7, Couldn’t connect to server) (Failed to connect to 192.168.1.254 port 42749 after 2026 ms: Couldn’t connect to server)
Thought this error was strange as this is not my internal ip address for plex and the server is online
Putting your media together with the Plex data folder onto the same hard drive will result in inferior performance.
If the hardware allows it, use an internal SSD drive (preferably one in an M2 slot) with a media collection as big as yours.
Don’t use VLC for checking files. VLC is like a sewage plant. Even if you feed garbage into it, it often produces something watchable.
MPC-HC on the other hand uses quite a similar software stack to Plex, so testing your files with that should give you more similar results to what you can expect in Plex.
That error message is not important at all.
The file also works fine when playing with MPC-HC. It’s only plex which hangs when scanning.
I have tried having plex data folder on SSD drive, but still have issues with plex scanning the files. I also scanned the hard drive to check the health of the drive and no problems detected.
How is the network file share connected to Windows?
(UNC path, IP address, drive letter)
Does the file share require username and password on first access?
It is an Rclone drive mount. I’ve tried both “standard mount” which creates a normal drive letter in Windows as well as “network mode” mount which creates networked drive. I am currently using network mode but both modes have same issue with plex.
No login is required to access the mounted drive.
Where is it pointing at? local file server/NAS? Or something else?
WebDAV server
Is it local or is it on the internet?
Internet
Additional info:
Even some audiobooks and music which are stored locally have not been scanned into plex. So issue doesn’t seem isolated only to WebDAV content.
Thanks
Storage devices have IOPS performance rating which effectively tells you how many operations they can handle in a given timeframe (per second). Every read and write is a separate operation, reading metadata is also a separate operation from reading a file.
Hard drives have notoriously low IOPS, and databases are one of the worst things to keep in low IOPS environments. Operating systems share similar characteristics, and you would not have fun time using Windows off a hard drive these days.
You might be able to brute force the scans over several weeks, but you would probably see issues even after that when simply watching videos since plex needs to keep the database up-to-date with play states and whatever else is going on in the background.
I had same issues several years ago when I held the operational databases in slow network locations (which were actually better performing than a local hard drive); I could watch maybe a video or two until the server went unresponsive for few minutes at a time. Not great user experience.
It doesn’t matter where your media is stored when plex database is choking the hard drive. Not to mention if you have any other activity on the drive on top of that.
All you really can do is move the plex databases to a faster storage mediums.
