# Sonic Analysis disk space

**URL:** https://forums.plex.tv/t/sonic-analysis-disk-space/768838
**Category:** Plex Labs
**Created:** [January 6, 2022, 4:20am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/sonic-analysis-disk-space/768838 "2022-01-06T04:20:22Z")
**Posts on this page:** 10
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![maxtimbo](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/maxtimbo/32/252656_2.png) [@maxtimbo](https://forums.plex.tv/u/maxtimbo)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2022, 4:20am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/sonic-analysis-disk-space/768838/1 "2022-01-06T04:20:22Z")

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I tried enabling the ‘sonic analysis’ on my music library. I have a massive music library, so expected the process to take some time. After a while I noticed that my plex service was crashing. Checking on the why, I noticed that I was running out of disk space for the boot device. I presume Sonic Analysis uses a bunch of disk space, so increased the root partition from 80gb to 120gb. Still not good enough.

I could create a partition on the NAS, which hosts the debian-based vm for plex. But I’m wondering how much disk space will this end up taking up? My current music library is just under 250G.

So, should I create a new partition for plex sonic analysis, which directory do I point to? Is is /var?

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### Author: ![elan](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/elan/32/5_2.png) [@elan](https://forums.plex.tv/u/elan)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2022, 6:11am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/sonic-analysis-disk-space/768838/2 "2022-01-06T06:11:27Z")

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Sonic analysis shouldn’t use a lot of disk space; figure ~200 bytes per track or something like that. It does decompress albums to WAV files into your temporary directory for analysis, but that shouldn’t be much.

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### Author: ![OttoKerner](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/ottokerner/32/10079_2.png) [@OttoKerner](https://forums.plex.tv/u/OttoKerner)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2022, 9:24am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/sonic-analysis-disk-space/768838/3 "2022-01-06T09:24:42Z")

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Well, if you have giga albums with hundreds of tracks, it might take a bit more space temporarily to analyze such an album.

AFAIK analysis is using the /tmp folder. Which might even be just in RAM, if you are using Docker and haven’t connected the /tmp folder of the container to a folder of the host on a hard drive.

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### Author: ![Dr\_Nick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@Dr\_Nick](https://forums.plex.tv/u/Dr_Nick)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2022, 5:45am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/sonic-analysis-disk-space/768838/4 "2022-02-07T05:45:23Z")

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Yes. I have hundreds of gigabytes of music analysis input files in my Temp directory on C drive on a Windows 10 system as Sonic Analysis seems to be persistently hung up on two albums.

I quit all Plex processes and delete the files, but they come back when Sonic Analysis starts up again. Frustrating.

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### Author: ![elan](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/elan/32/5_2.png) [@elan](https://forums.plex.tv/u/elan)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2022, 7:00am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/sonic-analysis-disk-space/768838/5 "2022-02-07T07:00:42Z")

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100s of gigabytes sounds way too large. the [server logs](https://support.plex.tv/articles/200250417-plex-media-server-log-files/) will tell you what it’s analyzing, but even a multidisc collection shouldn’t generate that much, as it decodes to low sample rate for analysis.

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### Author: ![Dr\_Nick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@Dr\_Nick](https://forums.plex.tv/u/Dr_Nick)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2022, 5:18pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/sonic-analysis-disk-space/768838/6 "2022-02-09T17:18:13Z")

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The logs weren’t helpful, I looked at them multiple times and couldn’t find the albums it was processing even when I found the Sonic Analysis lines.

I figured it out by listening to the sonic analysis temp files on my C drive, it wasn’t hung up, I think it was actually still processing all my saved podcasts, which I have in their own “music” library. I don’t know if anyone else saves podcasts that tend to go behind paywalls or that have been purchased, but you might consider having a “podcast” library choice. I found the toggle to exclude the library from sonic analysis and it immediately shut off activity and the temp files have not come back. But those temp files were hundreds of gigabytes.

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### Author: ![elan](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/elan/32/5_2.png) [@elan](https://forums.plex.tv/u/elan)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2022, 9:22pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/sonic-analysis-disk-space/768838/7 "2022-02-09T21:22:42Z")

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Good to know, thanks! Sonic Analysis is off by default on libraries, so at some point you must have enabled it?

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### Author: ![Dr\_Nick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@Dr\_Nick](https://forums.plex.tv/u/Dr_Nick)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2022, 7:08pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/sonic-analysis-disk-space/768838/8 "2022-02-10T19:08:28Z")

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Do you have to enable them for every library? I have two music libraries, one of which is the podcasts. I don’t remember ever going into them individually and turning the Sonic Analysis on, I just remember clicking the global sound analysis toggle.

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### Author: ![elan](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/elan/32/5_2.png) [@elan](https://forums.plex.tv/u/elan)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2022, 7:19pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/sonic-analysis-disk-space/768838/9 "2022-02-10T19:19:06Z")

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Yes, it’s per library, and defaults to off.

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### Author: ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/plex/original/3X/2/a/2acb9765406f63293d357b4ec509ec39aa28f2ad.png) [@system](https://forums.plex.tv/u/system)
#### Post date: [May 11, 2022, 7:19pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/sonic-analysis-disk-space/768838/10 "2022-05-11T19:19:52Z")

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