Apologies in advance for my naivety, new to Plex, and I want to get this right.
Discovered PLEX a while ago, took the plunge and installed a few weeks ago to my iMac, which is currently the media server.
Following more research, I have purchased a NVIDIA Shield Pro 500gb, and I have a 10tb external hard drive to be attached.
Is it best / cleaner to erase the data (content, libraries etc) on my iMac, install and if in on the Shield, and start again with that as the serverā¦?
Orā¦ look to migrate from the iMac to the Shieldā¦?
There is a lot of advice and different methods for each, and Iām unsure what is best, then the best way to action.
Also, on the shield, I understand I can set the 10tb external drive to remain as external, or allow it to think itās an internal drive.
Thanks in advance for your help. Any links in your reply, would be great, and I can follow those for step-by-step guidance.
Cross-platform migrations are not impossible but can be tricky ā especially on devices like the Shield where you donāt have immediate/easy access to the server data directory.
In theory you can setup your new server on the Shield and configure it to move the server data directory to your external drive. Once this is done, stop the server and copy the old data directory over.
e.g. like this:
Thanks so much. Iām really grateful for your advice.
Iām a bit of a planner, wanting to make sure any setup is as future-proof for my requirements as I can, and can foreseeā¦ I jumped a bit quick with the excitement of what PLEX offersā¦ lesson learned.
Iāll give these links a read, and discard the prior ones Iāve bookmarked, often too much information is worse then noneā¦ and I think I had started to confuse myself and probably mixing processesā¦ which wouldnāt be great on any level.
Iāll add my opinion which Iām sure others may disagree with. Iād suggest using your devices with what they are primarily designed for.
The Shield is an amazing streaming device but depending on your use case, how large you grow your plex library etcā¦ overtime plex as a server on the shield may just not cut it.
There has been so many threads over the years of folks with problems with plex on shield and usually its due to folks expecting it work as good as a PC, it wonāt.
Iād always recommend MAC/Windows/Linux (whatever your PC preference is) to run plex media server on. This is server software so best to run on something it will run well on. If you have a dedicated GPU all the better
Then use a good stream device, like the shield you have. Store your media NAS or directly plugged in external drivers to whatever is running plex.
It is like everything, the more you canvass opinion, the ,ore opinions you get.
I had read about this community though, as a resource of great tips and tricksā¦ lots to be learned.
My library at present is 3tb. But the āneedā to actually have the item has faded. Like with music I guess. Hardly Amoy one buys the physical copies of a release anymore, except the hardcore fans.
I was looking at NAS, but itās a confusion arena unless you really know what you are doing, and itās a bit out of my price range at the moment, as itās seems like a military grade investmentā¦ but the power it can yield is substantial.
Iām going to gather thoughts from all that reply, and then get the advised research done. I donāt want to progress any further, if Iām going to need to undo it all.
I used to understand all these things when my brain was younger and more agileā¦ now itās feeling more and more like magic.
NP. I tend not to over thing the NAS. I use my NAS purely for storage so when I got it I made sure it had good NAS specific disks (WD Red in my case) and got the most I could afford.
I will NEVER EVER install plex on the NAS. This path leads to the dark side and will over time run into problems with any large plex libraries.
As I said earlier, IMOā¦ plex server on a pc, NAS for storage of your media (or external drives) and then a good streaming device. If you can afford that then IMO this is the best setup.
If you want something smaller than plex on shield + attached drive will most likely be okay, for smaller libraries.
I think long term, NAS is the way to go, also for backups of my iMacs and MacBook, but currently brokeā¦ so itās back to saving pennies and seeing how soon I can take that kind of leap. By then, Iāll probably be needing to upgrade from the shield Pro. I currently have shout 3tb of media. Excluding music, that I donāt think Iāll migrate over to PLEX anyway, as Iām pretty happy with my HomePod set up.
Cool. Will keep that in mind. My media has stabilised of late, hovering around 3tb. The external hard drive which will be attached to the shield pro is a 10tb. So, Iāve got sone growth availability.
Just an aside question, Iām guessing when I configure the shield I say yes to the external drive being treated as if itās internalā¦? Or say external, ie mountableā¦?
If you start to fill up the internal storage (ie with plex metadata), you would want to use format for internal/applications data (different than media storage).
So as the external 10tb HD will hold copies (not my originals, as all of those are within my iTunes / iMac system), then I can say āconfigure this external drive as if it were internalā, the Shield does the rest.
Following the āconsiderationsā from the group, and had looked at it previouslyā¦ I have been also researching the NAS option and associated kit. Iāve had a few issues with my broadband, and I want to make sure thatās now stable and running at its optimum (Looks like Iāll need to invest in a new router, rather than my BT supplied āhubā, so will take the Wi-fi 6 route, to try and slightly and short-term āfuture proofā. Then, once thatās done, and the expense replenished NAS may be on the horizon. But, itās going to be a while off.
Everyone has been very kind and shared their thought and guidance, with no hard sell āyou must do thisā, just knowledgeable sight of what works (or would work) best.
THANK YOU.
ā¦ and so, my reading, and reading, and reading continues.
honestly I would recommend a separate SSD for being formatted internal, and just leave the media drive formatted as ntfs/mac so that it can be transferred/used on your other devices if/when needed.
AFAIR formatting as internal, means the drive must be permanently attached to the shield.
it may also complicate adding/removing/managing media on the drive (assuming media can even be used on an internally formatted drive, I do not know for sure).
Blimey, another format type. Iād never heard of AFAIR. I can see how powerful PLEX is, and is a dream as long as itās configured correctly, with planning being key, or live with a messy library.
Thanks for this advice also re the internal ā external thing. Looks like Iām owing you many pints
sorry, AFAIR is short for āas far as I rememberā
similar to AFAIK is āas far as I knowā
in any case, I would advise to thoroughly research (google), and if you have extra drives, use them to experiment to make sure you can set up how you want before you make any final commitment.
