I have a very large number of paths that have to be manually added to the library. I could live with that if Plex would use a standard Windows select file/dir dialog box. The Plex GUI for adding folders to a library looks like it was designed for someone with one or two paths at most. Very cumbersome to use.
The solution to this obvious and should be quite easy. Just import a text file (or cvs) with all the paths, one per line! You could even add it to the browse for folder dialog but have an option to select a file.
I was also thinking that symbolic links (symlinks) in Windows might be a possible workaround as you could have just one top level folder filled with symlinks to all the real media folders. And then just add the top level folder as the only folder in the library. This would require Plex to support library folders with more than one layer. Not sure if Plex will do that??
Correct. That’s generally all you need.
I only have 1 for most libraries
If you need an entire file with a list of paths, something is telling me you are doing something that goes against the way Plex tells you to name and organize your files
This would be an optimal folder structure which would include 3 libraries with 3 paths
Are you adding individual tv shows instead of a “TV Shows” folder?
I am using the format you posted but I have 35 drives on a server, and each drive has aTV library, a movie library, music library and an audio book library (actually a music). So that’s 35 paths for each of the libraries.
Thanks!
Fred
On a side note - I use snapraid with 4 parity disks so in theory I could lose 4 drives simultaneously and be ok. So far I’ve only had one drive fail and I was able to recreate it! Took 30’ish hours so 4 would be horrible!
I highly recommend snapraid for Plex drives as a real backup is unrealistic and would be cost prohibitive.
Thanks!
Fred
If you already use a pooling/array solution, it is even more puzzling to me why you divide your media storage into 35 parts. A drive pool allows you to bundle the storage capacity of your drives and make it available under one common address. Not only does this free you from having to manually distribute your media across drives, but handling storage expansions doesn’t require any changes, anywhere, except in the pooling software.
That’s a good question! I did not actually plan to have 35 different sections! It just happened over time. This whole thing started as a way to offload OTA TIVO recordings and slowly morphed into a KODI box and finally a full Plex server.
I have heard of pooling drives but never really considered it before now. I have some googling to do! Do you think it’s worth trying to convert over to a drive pool? Or just leave it alone for now? I am using Windows 11 and all the drives are NTFS so going Linux is probably not an option.
