Unusual amount of harddisk activity when Plex server is running

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
1

Server Version#: 1.18.6.2368
Player Version#:

Hi there,

I’ve installed Plex 2 weeks ago and I’m noticing a very annoying harddisk activity that sounds like it’s constantly scanning my entire computer, this stop immediately when I exit the Plex media server. Can I do something about that?

Marcel

2
  • Make sure to not point Plex at the regular default Music/ Video folders which are pre-defined by Windows. Create a separate folder structure outside.
  • Stick to the recommended folder structure and file naming. https://support.plex.tv/articles/categories/your-media/
    For movies, go with the “one subfolder per movie” method. It greatly reduces scanning time of the movie library.
  • Don’t let ripper/downloader software put ongoing downloads/rips into folders which are being “watched” by Plex.
  • Make sure to prohibit other “media software” from modifying the media folders in any way, e.g. by storing its own metadata etc. into them.
  • Disable automatic and/or periodic library updates
  • Put all videos which are not easily “match-able” with the online metadata sources into a separate library, which uses the “Personal Media” agent. i.e. everything that is not a “movie” or “tv series” listed on IMDb, TheTVDB or TheMovieDB
  • If you are using external hard drives (or network shares) for your media files, you must disable Settings - Server - Library - “Empty trash automatically after every scan”
    or the server might have to re-scan/re-match all items very often.
  • Make sure to leave the server running during the scheduled maintenance period. https://support.plex.tv/articles/201553286-scheduled-tasks/
    During this time, it must also have access to the media files, so make sure to not power down any external drives/NAS devices or WiFi networks it might need.
3 Likes
3

In addition to Otto’s advice, if you have a really large movie library, and you’ve enabled the ‘Enable video preview thumbnails’ option, Plex may still be building those thumbnails.

1 Like
4

Actually I don’t care too much about pictures or info about movies being downloaded from the IMDB or something, I can imagine that is putting a heavy load on my computer and I don’t want that, all I want is to be able to stream the films and TV shows from folders on my computer that I’ve gathered over the years and that are absolutely not organized in any logical way to my SmartTV, so I gotta be able to browse the folders and start a movie, thats it. :slight_smile:

And I can do that now, is there an easy way to just uncheck something to stop scanning alltogether? Is it just that video preview thumbnail option? :wink:

5

Instead of library types for “movies” or “tv shows”, create a library type of “other videos”.

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