I head folks swear by ZFS but the folks here at Plex do more swearing at ZFS when it goes down. It seems they always have to jump through hoops when drives change. I want simple. Plug it in, let it work.
I think you’ll be better served if you put the database on SSD/Flash than the transcoder temp.
I say this because a single HD, providing 150 MB/sec of R/W speed, delivers over 1 Gigabit / sec of video. This equates to 10+ simultaneously transcoded BluRay disks at 120 Mb/s. Real world application would be more equivalent to 30-40 streams of 30-40 Mb/s. Processor and memory bandwidth will be exceeded long before that is.
Therefore I assert, memory or flash for the transcoder temp is gross overkill.
Sorry, haven’t read fully on this, but wanted to share what I’ve done with my system. Basically I got a spare hard drive, and added to the system. Formatted it as EXT4, because reads and writes are much faster than NTFS. Then I have that drive 160Gb, to do just TRANSCODING. Works great, plus after a show is recorded, within 15 minutes the show is ready to watch in TS format. For my server, I have it covert the TS media to web MP4 format to stream at higher rates with less lag, using HandBrakeCLI . Then for my TRANSCODE directory, just point it to my hard drive mount point. Server does the rest, and I set my TRANSCODE buffer to 60.
If you create a RAM Drive, that’s the fastest, if you have enough free RAM to provide it. But on a budget system, a spare hard drive works great in a Linux system, plus no fragmentation. smile
Reason for the 160Gb drive is I have found when recording over 4 to 6 hours of a show, you will need about 40 to 60Gb of TRANSCODE space. wink
Another hint: use this setting for four channel TRANCODING : Background transcoding x264 preset ::: set to “Ultra Fast”
