Revisiting SMB/UNC libraries and auto update / change detection

[cyr0nk0r]

PMS latest version.
So it seems there is hot debate over the years about using UNC paths for your media libraries using SMB or NFS on a remote server. Sometimes NFS, sometimes another windows server. It seems some people have said the change detection works, some say it doesn’t. Sometimes they say ‘generally’ works, ‘generally doesn’t’. What is ‘generally’?

Library scanning on the network share

In my experience shares don’t ‘auto update’ reliably. Local drives do. Update periodically will take care of it, but I have ‘auto update’ on, ‘periodically’ off and when adding to a share I update manually. Updates during scheduled tasks seem to be ok - if you can wait that long. PITA? Yea, but Plex doesn’t seem interested in fixing it so PITA it is.

UNC Path Issue - Auto Update

I have two Movie libraries for recorded TV. The first one is on a local: F:\MCEB-Movies I have no issue with the library. When I add/delete material it comes and goes automatically. No problems. I have another Movie library and a TV Show Library on the OS drive housed in the machine with the tuner card and am using the UNC paths: \TONY-PC\Plex Box C\BuddyDumps\MCEB-Movies \TONY-PC\Plex Box C\BuddyDumps\MCEB-TV (one of those two initial backslashes gets truncated - but you knew that) The l…

Does running a partial scan works on network drives?

https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200289306-Updating-vs-Refreshing-a-Library Update my library automatically Typically, the most desirable way to keep your Libraries updated is using the Update my library automatically feature. This uses capabilities of the operating system to detect when content has changed and then initiate a Library update. Note: In most cases, this should work for content on local filesystems. It will generally not work for network shares mounted via SMB, NFS, AFP…

Library scanning on change not working?

I could not get automatic updates to work for external storage or internal storage.

PLEX auto detect library changes NOT working

Seems recently plex is no longer picking up changes to library when I add new files. [image]

So my question is this. It’s October 2020. A lot of these threads are years old.

1. Has this been fixed/improved upon?
2. Does Plex detect changes to a library now when using SMB and/or NFS?
3. Are there certain configurations that work reliably and other configurations that don’t? If so, what are those configurations.
4. Are mapped drives a workaround?
5. What about symbolic links? Is that a viable workaround? (windows symbolic links)

[cyr0nk0r]

anyone? This seems to get asked a lot without a real solid answer.

[cyr0nk0r]

would still like an answer to this please.

[cyr0nk0r]

Do plex staff even monitor the forums? They certainly don’t answer emails and have no phone number.

[creamers]

I used an SMB share for Plex and many versions ago it worked perfectly though not anymore, my workaround is to up the refresh library interval. Honestly, with an SMB share there are many more moving parts.

[BigWheel]

It doesn’t. If it worked for some via some sort of fluke then that all it is. either the networked drive system updates the mtime to the host computer or it doesn’t. If there is some systems that does that then ok but Plex doesn’t control it.