I know this isn’t much compared to some, but I’m about to, for the first time, add a hard drive where I cannot simply move data around to keep all my TV shows on one drive and all my movies on the next. Before, I would simply rearrange so that I could keep the simplest configuration.
But now that my storage needs have gone beyond this, I’m wondering what I need to do for Plex to manage the data. Currently, I have one primary drive for all TV shows and a separate drive for movies (and a backup of both HDDs). Now, I’ll need to have a /TV Shows folder and a /Movies folder on the same (new) drive. First of all, is this OK for Plex? Secondly, as I add seasons to shows, I need to know if a sequential TV show needs to be in the same location. Let me clarify, I have show XYZ, seasons 1-4 on my current TV Shows HDD. Season 5 comes out and I want to add it. Am I better off moving some of my TV Shows alphabetical folder to the new drive and splitting up that way so that Season 5 of show XYZ can go in the same location and seasons 1-4 OR should I simply make a new folder on my new HDD like TV Shows/X/XYZ/Season 5/files and Plex will simply find the seasons from BOTH location and put it together in the Plex interface. Which one would you do? Is one better than another (moving several of the alphabetical folders to the new folders and keeping all shows seasons together or simply starting from scratch and adding new shows and seasons as needed to the new HDD)?
On a similar note for movies, would you move over several of the alphabetical folders and keep all movies together? Or would you simply create a new full A-Z folder listing on the new HDD and add movies as needed? Do you feel that one way is easier in the long run in terms of finding your data on the HDDs? I suppose I could simply move more and more folders across multiple HDDs in the future to keep all alphabetical movie listings together. I just don’t know what most people do or even how Plex handles this type of thing.
Please share your experiences on this as I’m really interested in hearing what works best for you and which is simplest. I can see benefits to both sides. On the one had, knowing all Movies/A/… are in one place is a nice thing as you know all those movies are together. I’m just wondering if that becomes more work than its worth in the future. Thanks so much in advance!
First off, it’s fine to do what you intend, by having more than one drive as a library target. It works great, and some people do this to keep genres intact (separate drives for a genre.) you just need to add he new drive in the library to make this work.
Now for TV shows…
I am going to cover this differently than movies, because they are done differently as far as matching, etc. And depending on the software you use for DVRing them (Sonarr?) you need to keep the entire show intact. So if you are going to have seasons 1-4 and then add 5, but want 5 on the “new” drive, you are better off to move seasons 1-4 and make sure that the settings on your DVR app take this into account. I know Sonarr and TVRename can’t take having a show split across drives at all, so this isn’t even optional for them.
And by move, I really mean that you copy, verify that the new location works, then delete from the old location. Never just MOVE something within Plex or most DVR apps. By copy/delete, you verify that watched status, matching, etc. all match before you delete the old location’s contents. Unless you do it in steps you risk losing this info.
By alpha folders, do you mean you have a Movies folder and then 26 individual folders under that for alphabet the movies start with? If so, this is how at least a few of us do it as well. (I know I do, anyway, and at least one other of the larger operators does the same.) I don’t use any MKV’s in my system so I use folders much as others use the MKV format, to house all of the pertinent parts of a media item. Moving as folder in this case is similar to moving the MKV.
I have movies/alphas on my different drives, and this doesn’t create a problem for me. All in all, I think you have a good plan. Just keep in mind that “moving” in this case is a 3 step process. Copy, verify, delete.
Hi @MikeG6.5! Thanks so much for taking the time to respond. I really appreciate it.
To answer your question, yes, for good or for bad (and I honestly don’t know which one!), I have my movies separated out into 26 (technically 27) folders of 0-9 (one folder) and then the 26 letters of the alphabet. For me it’s the easiest and most absolute method to group the movies. I’d freak out and stress out if I had to go by something like genre (ugh, should this “dramedy” be in comedy or drama or do I need to just make a new dramedy genre? Or this western is also a comedy (or drama) which one should it go in. For whatever reason, my personality with perfectionistic tendencies doesn’t do well with this type of ambiguity and having to make those sorts of decisions with each film. At least alphabetical is fairly absolute at least to the way my mind works.
As much as I may be the go-to tech person in my circles, I’m not nearly at the levels of many of the tech gurus here in Plex world. All that to say that I don’t even completely understand what you mean by having MKV files being the primary container for movie info. I guess that means I simply use folders. Again, for better or worse, it’s worked so far.
I didn’t realize that the DVR programs had trouble with splitting the TV shows locations…I thought my only worry on this would be Plex server itself. Thanks so much for letting me know that. So, I guess I’ll ask this again, with more knowledge and understanding now behind it… if it were you, would you only move the TV Shows that you needed to to the new drive (ie ones with more seasons coming out) or, for simplicity of finding things down the road, would you recommend moving several of your alphabetical folders so that, for instance, everything in 0-9 & A-P folders were on one drive (with more room now available for new content on that drive because of moving the remainder of the alpha folders) and Q-Z on the “new” drive? Or is that more hassle than it’s worth? The advantage in my mind is that I can name the HDDs and see at a glance where I’m moving things to and more easily find what I’m looking for rather than having each and every alphabetical folder replicated across multiple drives where I may have to search more than one to figure out if a given show is on the “old” drive or the “new” one. OTOH, I get that it’s more work for the drive on a one time basis to move everything around, not that it will matter much in the overall drive life.
Along that line, provided I use the three step process that you suggested of copy, verify, and delete (rather than just “moving” the files in one step) and of course adding in the new file locations in Plex prior to deleting the old ones (if I choose to move half the alphabetical folders rather than duplicating them) so that it can keep all the watch data, etc, will Plex cope with moving all the folders without any fuss?
Thanks again for taking the time to respond and help me understand what I need to, in order to make this work. I really appreciate it!
@trumpy81, thanks so much for the helpful reply! It came in while I was typing my last response and didn’t show up until I refreshed the page.
You gave me some great information as well as more things to think about. I’m really wondering if I may want to just move (in the three steps outlined by MikeG6.5 of copy, verify, delete rather than move) a chunk of my alphabetical folders over for both the TV Shows and Movies for the sake of being able to find things down the road. If I do that, I never have to have movies or TV shows starting with a “G” for instance, spread across multiple drives with no real rhyme or reason as to where they are. And while it would seem likely that a cancelled TV show wouldn’t be back on, the British show “Birds of a Feather” was gone for 15 years before coming back just a couple of year ago. I’m also concerned that while it may be easy to remember when a show ended now, it may be more difficult to pinpoint as time goes along. Is that crazy? I just looked back at your post and saw that this is essentially how you setup your system rather than having two folders on both drives that both have 1900-1989 and 1990 on, which is what I’m concerned about, would mean it’s hard to actually locate files quickly, when needed.
I also wondered if you would please elaborate a bit more about the space needed for drive maintenance. I hadn’t heard that in the past and I’m concerned that I need to get this sorted out as I currently don’t have that much extra space (I’ve been trying to figure out a suitable HDD to add on to the system). Is this needed for media storage drives (in addition to the more obvious one of where Plex’s database is stored)?
Thanks again for taking the time to respond. I really appreciate it!
Your plans as they sit are good plans, given you now are looking at the copy/verify/delete mindset. For movies, put what you want of your alpha that makes the most sense. On my system, I have many more “S” movies than any other alpha, so I would lean more to going to “P” or “R” as a dividing line from one drive to the next, if it were me. BUT, your mileage may vary, based on what you have on your system.
My rule of thumb on series we already covered. Keep an entire SERIES intact, don’t split on the series for love, money or what have you. Most apps for renaming can’t deal with this, so no sense in reinventing, bug reports, etc … Just follow the app’s guidelines for a SINGLE SERIES and you should be fine. (I actually have anime on one drive array, and other series on another drive array and Sonarr doesn’t care as long as It knows where to put what. The beauty of automation!)
All drive systems have a tolerance, and this comes into play as a drive gets closer to max capacity. 10% is a bit less conservative than I like to use. I go with 15-20% based on issues I have seen in the past. (So a 5TB drive better have about 1TB available, or I’m shuffling things to make that drive space available on it. 500GB is too low based on my own experience…) Your mileage may vary, but this is what almost 30 years in the industry has shown me. Way better to add another drive to the system than risk losing months or years of downloads…
I had a similar requirement to you, I ended up using a piece of software “Stablebit Drivepool” that makes all the drives appear as 1, and it’ll place/move files around depending on rules set so you can have different series (or episodes in my case, as I like my media to be evenly spread across the disks) on different disks without things like Sonarr exploding. It’s not free but worth a try (there is a free trial though), I have now completely removed the drive letters for the actual drives and rely entirely on Drivepool and it’s pool drive letter to manage my files.
Another benefit is I can simply add another disk to the pool at any time (I really need to do that now, I’ve just had a 4TB disk fail on me :()and it’ll move data around to even them out (that’s configurable). You can also configure duplication per folder, I don’t use that for media as it’s all replaceable but I do use it for my own files to give me some resiliency in case of a drive failure.
Oh - and it can automatically evacuate a disk if it detects an issue (best paired with Stablebit Scanner, although I am yet to see how well that works - I didn’t have it installed on my last disk failure unfortunately)
Sonarr has a way to make global edits on the folders, so you can 3 step move your media from one drive/array to another and add in the step of pointing Sonarr to the new location across several shows at once.
You go into the series editor and then just tag the series you moved, point them all to a new directory, and hit organize and they are all moved according to Sonarr’s DB’s as well.
I run on an Asustor NAS, so apps like DrivePool aren’t an option for me. But there is always a way to do things. Trial and error should be my middle name…
