Server Version#:1.43.4.10903 (sub)
Player Version#:10.30.2.3548
I’ve been successfully using the shield pro as my plex server for about five years without too many problems. Recently I’ve been getting slowdowns and crashes that seem to be server related. I’ve observed this during a recording playback and also found plex to be sluggish and almost nonresponsive when starting up after the shield has been in standby overnight. At first, I thought this was an issue with the new plex player app, but I rolled back to version 10.30.2.3548. Any player issue would not explain the overnight problems with the server.
I’ve been working with Nvidia Support, but they’ve offered no resolution.
I am on shield experience 9.2.4
I have one 5 TB USB 3.0 HDD designated as removable storage for my media files. Most are DVR recordings. The other server files reside on the shield internal storage.
The internal storage available is 8.1 GB and the HDD has 1.4 TB of free space
The HDD is on the outermost USB port (furthest from the HDMI port) and the menu is configured for power to always be on this port. The shield is on a hardwired LAN ethernet along with an HDHomerun tuner.
I checked the drive and it reports healthy, but I know the SMART diagnostic tool for hard drives is not necessarily a good predictor of a pending failure.
I’m able to induce a freeze within the UI app (buffering first, then freezing) by having one or more recordings started and then playing back a program recorded earlier. During one test, it handled the load just fine for about 20 minutes. Temps never got above about 58 deg C before leveling off per the ADB tool. So, I don’t think the shield is overheating. Buffering started, then no response, then hard freeze in the plex app. Too many commercial skips can also cause this type of failure.
If I move the playback to another device (my iPhone) and then start a recording, I get buffering about 20 minutes in and again when the recording is finishing up, but no crash. This makes sense as the shield has less load with playback on another device.
I’ve also observed that HDD access via windows file explorer and Cx file explorer are also slow after I notice a plex app slowdown. If I force stop the plex server I get normal file navigation but video file playback via VLC is slow and buffered. So, improvement, but not normal until I reboot the shield.
Attached are two log files for the central time zone during when I’ve experienced plex app:
Plex Media Server Logs_2026-10-31_10-22-03 2nd slowdown.zip (1.4 MB)
Plex Media Server Logs_2026-10-31_09-50-04 1st slowdown.zip (1.9 MB)
