In the past year, I have watched the size of the PMS folders and files (located at C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server) increase from 16 GB to 77 GB. My movie library has doubled during this time (to ~2600 movies), so I’d expect an increase - but not this much! All media files (movies, music, photos, etc.) reside on [multiple] other drives. My sys drive is an SSD, and if PMS grows much more, I will need to buy a larger SSD. Is there a way to condense or optimize things in the PMS folder (cache, metadata, etc.)? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
Are your Movie libraries set to Enable video preview thumbnails? If so, this will generate tons of small image files, which you see when fast-forwarding through a movie. That’s usually the cause of these complaints.
Generate video preview thumbnails is set to: never.
Generate chapter thumbnails is set to: as a scheduled task.
I’m not exactly sure where those thumbnails are stored. If you can find them, you can find out how much space they’re taking.
I notice that the folder: “Cache\PhotoTranscoder” is over 41 GB in size. Is this part of a recent PMS release? I don’t recall seeing this folder before (or maybe it was just much smaller in size, so I ignored it). Is it possible to somehow clear this cache without messing-up my server? My gut says to leave things well enough alone, as PMS is working just fine. However, with my SSD filling up, I could certainly benefit from reclaiming all that space.
This may (or may not) be related: Ever since the latest PMS update, I’ve noticed that it takes more time to generate the poster art when scrolling through the libraries (using Edge browser). Before the update, poster art thumbnails were virtually instantaneous.
I have my PMS folder on my E drive ( C drive been SSD and E being bigger traditional HD (much))
Its an option in settings/server/general
The path where local application data is stored
E:\AAAplex\Plex Media Server
Moving a cache folder from the SSD to another HDD would probably degrade performance, so here’s what I did: I shutdown Plex and renamed the PhotoTranscoder cache folder to PhotoTranscoderOLD and created a new PhotoTranscoder folder, and restarted Plex. I scanned through the libraries and did find a few dozen albums that were missing poster art (and fixed those). Everything else seems perfectly fine. Recently, I did tell Plex to Optimize my libraries and it “worked” on that for a LONG time. I’m now convinced that Plex downloaded a TON of stuff from the internet, during the Optimize.
Bottom line: PhotoTranscoder folder size went from 43.3 GB (395,149 items) to 5.7 GB (25,287 items) - and everything appears normal within Plex. Problem solved.
Thanks everyone for your assistance/suggestions!
@jimhallinan said:
Moving a cache folder from the SSD to another HDD would probably degrade performance, …
My experience with a pretty large library but rarely with more than two streams active and non remote is that an SSD makes for little noticeable improvement in Plex’s performance. It does make the computer faster to start but most people run their Plex server 24/7 and reboot only rarely (I reboot as part of regular maintenance about every two weeks) so startup speed is really not much of an issue.
I am glad that you have everything working the way you want but I just wanted to point out that an SSD does not, in my setup, have much of an impact on Plex.
Remember that video reads and writes to and from a drive is VERY undemanding it is the processing of the video in your server that impacts speeds.
@jimhallinan said:
Moving a cache folder from the SSD to another HDD would probably degrade performance, so here’s what I did: I shutdown Plex and renamed the PhotoTranscoder cache folder to PhotoTranscoderOLD and created a new PhotoTranscoder folder, and restarted Plex. I scanned through the libraries and did find a few dozen albums that were missing poster art (and fixed those). Everything else seems perfectly fine. Recently, I did tell Plex to Optimize my libraries and it “worked” on that for a LONG time. I’m now convinced that Plex downloaded a TON of stuff from the internet, during the Optimize.Bottom line: PhotoTranscoder folder size went from 43.3 GB (395,149 items) to 5.7 GB (25,287 items) - and everything appears normal within Plex. Problem solved.
Thanks everyone for your assistance/suggestions!
I checked my Photo Transcoder folder and it has 115k files and is 17 Gb.
I have 3K movies, 30K tv episodes, 10k music videos and 40k mp3’s.
So I don’t think your “fix” will keep your PMS folder small enough in the long run …!!
And as Elijah mentioned above - the SSD speed is not a big part of the whole PMS process.
Move your PMS folder to a HDD ! I bet you see no speed difference!!
Well, perhaps my solution is not so much a “fix” as it is a “workaround” toward attaining my goal of shrinking the PhotoTranscoder folder. Since I deleted the cache and allowed it to re-populate, the file size is much more manageable. If spikemixture’s folder size is 17 GB, then something was definitely awry with my system, as my PhotoTranscoder folder ballooned to 43 GB overnight. My movie count is comparable to spikemixture’s, and my mp3 count is 90k. However my TV episodes and music videos are MUCH smaller, so it doesn’t make sense (to me) why my cache folder was twice as large. Curiosity got the better of me, so I loaded last month’s system image and found the PhotoTranscoder folder to be 22 GB in size. So it is conclusive that running “Optimize Database” and/or “Update Libraries” (I really can’t remember which task I performed) created over 200,000 new items (23 GB). I realize that cache is not static, but I take notice when something just doesn’t feel right - and this occurrence was one of those times. I expect the cache folder to increase over time, but not to double overnight.
Thank you all for your responses!
I really disagree with those who say an SSD doesn’t help.
On my system with roughly 250K media files when I have the meta-data on a normal HDD it is slow scrolling through movies/shows. When it’s on an SSD it’s very fast. It probably has to due with the size of the meta-data folders and mine is about 650 GB in size.
So I think it’s size dependent!
@cayars said:
I really disagree with those who say an SSD doesn’t help.On my system with roughly 250K media files when I have the meta-data on a normal HDD it is slow scrolling through movies/shows. When it’s on an SSD it’s very fast. It probably has to due with the size of the meta-data folders and mine is about 650 GB in size.
So I think it’s size dependent!
So we can assume you have a terabyte (or close) SSD
They are getting cheaper but US$500 is still too much and yes your library is HUGE
Yes it’ on a 1TB SSD. I pulled it from my laptop to test and fell in love with the performance boost I got with Plex and that was back when my library was only about half the size.
PS I have qty 3 1TB drives in my main laptop. 
