Firstly, my apologies if this is in the wrong sub-forum. There didn’t seem to be a “general NAS questions” option…
So today as I was about to buy a new 8TB external drive I thought “maybe its time I invest in a NAS” and started looking around for an affordable option.
I then read that many NAS solutions can run Plex Media Server and I thought “Great! Kill two birds with one stone”. But then I read you need a very specific kind of NAS in order to do transcoding and the one I was looking at, the QNAP TS-231P-US wouldn’t support it.
Currently my PLEX set-up is a bunch of external hard drives plugged into an old MacBook Pro in order to stream to my Apple TV or iPad. Most content I download is between 720p-1080p and I usually will re-wrap MKVs to mp4s, though sometimes I’m too lazy and just throw it in the watchfolders for PLEX to scan.
Currently I don’t stream anything remotely because it doesn’t work with my current setup (can’t figure out the port forwarding).
So my question is: do I really need to worry about the ability to transcode? I don’t think I’ve ever streamed to more than one device at a time, and all my devices I’m streaming to are Apple devices which as far as I know support the h264/x264 content I’m downloading/ripping.
I suppose I could just buy a NAS and point the MacBook Pro to the files on the server and still use it to do the transcoding, but it’d be nice to be able to remove it from the setup and just run everything off the NAS.
I’ll admit I’m new to all of this kind of tech so not really sure what solution makes the most sense/works the best, but if anyone can offer insight I’d greatly appreciate it!
Personally I’m a fan of separation of church and state. Most of the NAS boxes that can run Plex with any decency will have some pretty hefty CPUs built in. Most NAS boxes run it alright, but you’ll run into concerns in transcoding situations with lesser boxes. Also, many NAS solutions fall behind in Plex updates, and a few are so limited in function that it’s almost a joke. Don’t let that turn you off though. There’s a large population out there running fully from a NAS and they couldn’t be happier.
Keeping the NAS for files and a separate server I believe is a better long term solution. This gives you the ability to upgrade piece by piece when necessary. One part is not fully dependent on the other.
@AmazingRando24 said:
Keeping the NAS for files and a separate server I believe is a better long term solution. This gives you the ability to upgrade piece by piece when necessary. One part is not fully dependent on the other.
I was considering this an an option as well. I’m just curious as to the kind of speeds I could expect: my router is downstairs (which is where I’d have to plug the NAS in), and my laptop that acts as my Plex server is upstairs, so it’d be accessing the files over the network, although it’d be doing so wirelessly. I wonder if that would impact the speed to the point that the stream would fall apart.
Part of the benefit of running PLEX off the NAS itself is that it’d remove that latency and I’d finally have my server hardwired so I’d get good speeds on all my devices.
So I feel like it’s a catch 22. Neither option is perfect, so I want to go with one with the least number of tradeoffs.
I got excited by the prospects of this Synology box but apparently it isn’t supported by Plex, so there goes that idea.
If possible, you’ll want to avoid any wireless pieces in the chain of the Plex server and your files. That’s the easiest place for nightmare scenarios to start. Any number of little things will goof the whole works.
If you’re fully wired on a network with a separated server and NAS, everything runs pretty smooth. That’s how most of us roll.
Let’s see if anyone else chimes in about a suitable NAS that can run Plex. I know they’re out there. I just don’t have any experience in them.
