i am looking at converting my 2 bay unit to JBOD so can gain the space from current Raid 1 2x10TB
i have backed up the media to an external 10TB so can start from fresh. but reading into JBOD and way it stores files on disk 1 till full then starts filling disk 2 being spanned or i can have two separate shares… i was wondering how can i split my movies better?
i know i could just chuck half across the disk 1 and other half across disk 2 but i was wondering if there is any application or way i can split the films like…
disk 1 holds films 1 3 5 7 9
disk 2 holds films 2 4 6 8 10
so the wear and tear is more spread rather than just disk 1 being used all the time since have 8TB of media… not sure if this will give a slight performance increase with files spread across disks
The most dramatic wear comes from constant write processes. As you’re using the device for storage and read processes, you’ll mostly accrue wear just from having the drive spinning. Alternating drives for each movie will be more wear and tear on your brain than it will be on the drive.
You won’t see any performance gain going to JBOD. Remember, you’re reading a big data set using Plex. It never tries to read the entire file at once. Unless you’ve got scores of people all playing content at the same time, you’ll never run into I/O issues on your storage drives. Only if you have scores of people, would a JBOD instance potentially have any advantage. And then that is only if they are evenly playing content from each disk.
Disk spanning sounds great in theory as now you’ve got a 20TB volume, but the second one drive fails, you’ve lost your entire collection. It is safer to have them as two separate volumes.
The other recommendation is to schedule routine drive health checks, and actually do them. If your NAS has a drive health check utility built into it, make sure it works, and that the alert system works correctly.
I don’t use a NAS myself, but my server runs JBOD. I schedule monthly drive health checks, and if a drive gets down around 70% health, I schedule a replacement. I keep the old drive for cold storage should the new drive catastrophically fail without warning.
Is it the best option? No, but it is the option that works, within my budget.
Does your NAS support RAID 0? If so, it may be appropriate for your situation. RAID 0 stripes your data across two (or more) disks and provides increased performance. The caveat is of course that there is no redundancy and if any single disk fails the entire logical disk fails. Here’s some additional information:
thanks for the replies @Uh_Oh and @pshanew and interesting to read so thank you
its only a cheapie wd ex2 ultra i am just testing for a basic setup, as currently using the PC with WOL with a 8TB drive but for some reason plex is not always allowing my pc to go to sleep so sometimes it stays on all night for no reason while other days it sleeps no problem or if exit the plex app
i was looking at testing this unit later in RAID 0 so can get the most out of the drives as if i loose the data it is not a major issue, as nothing critical that i cant grab again
currently just trying out Vanilla JBOD so two separate volumes which works well so far with all films currently just on drive 1… but i didn’t know if i had say 1000 films if it would load quicker having the files arranged as “drive1 films 1 3 5 7 9 / drive2 films 2 4 6 8 10” for example
so when comes to loading up the libaray it will be from both drives but when comes to playing an actual film it will be off either drive 1 or 2 if this makes any sense
this is why was trying find an app i can select all my files and click a button and it would highlight all the odd or even files which i can then put across the two drives, tried windows invert but that dont work way i hoped
sorry if this dont make sense with what wanna test out
Hi, jez my2c. JBOD is fine for doing NAS (file storage/backup primarily) rather than media-spitting (what plex does). So yeah you can use JBOD that way if you have a stockpile of odd drives, pretty good use actually. Good luck & lemme know
I tried to explain this above. You won’t see any real impact on this, as there is no way you can tell your users they have to play a movie on an alternating drive from another active user.
Also, RAID 0 won’t give you any more space than the two drives in JBOD format. It just gives you one virtual volume that equals the available space of the two physical drives in JBOD. You can still run your server with a disk down in JBOD, while you’re dead in the water with RAID 0 and a drive down.
Ahh that’s a shame… just doing a test with 200 films split in a “drive1 films 1 3 5 7 9 / drive2 films 2 4 6 8 10” method using vanilla JBOD and definitely a speed improvement with loading of the library files
As I’m used to the PC loading my library instantly as scroll through due to the nvme drive… does anyone know why plex app on windows cause issues with sleep mode
Since backup my data maybe I try RAID 0 next to see if better performance for loading or maybe use this nas for storage and PC as plex server or look into a Intel nuc maybe
plex is a server, which is designed to be on 24/7.
so sleep is prevented.
backups are always a good idea, the fastest way to lose your data is using raid 0.
plex peformance is not dependent on how fast your media is, it depends on how fast the cpu/drive of where the plex database and metadata are stored.
ssd/nvme are the best places to have fast plex performance.
for increasing media storage needs, you need to consider getting a larger nas with 4 or more bays that can let you use raid 5 or raid 6, and can expand when larger hard drives come out.
larger nas be great for someone who needs it but for myself it a waste as dont need 4 drives for amount films i have and i cant see myself ever having more than 500 if honest
well after some testing of raid 0 i think the low spec of this nas is indeed the issue so im gonna just order a Seagate 14 TB IronWolf through work as be alot cheaper, and plonk that in the PC and be done with it and use the current 8TB red for backup use
Thank you to everyone who has helped and made me learn a few things to… and thank you @TeknoJunky for your reply on the performance bit as will go back to using the PC for watching the odd film
i been using plex for years on the PC but fancied trying a different route but think i need invest in a proper nas or an intel nuc with an external multi bay enclosure
but seriously i could never have more than 500 films as id never have time watch them all and i reckon theirs only maybe 50 favourite films id keep
there seems to be so many ways to grab films nowadays that i cant see myself storing thousands … some members on here must have so many films to last a lifetime
