I wanted to save electricity by not having my mac mini on. I’m currently using a portable hdd for storing my movies and playing it off of the router. I’m thinking of using my Seagate GoFlex vertical hard drive as my main storage for videos only. Is it possible to use that as a server without using NAS or my Mac? My router is a nighthawk ax40. I’m not sure if this is the right place to talk about this issue as I’m not too experienced on how networking works.
No it’s not possible to use that external hard drive as it doesn’t have enough “smarts” to run Plex Media Server. The cheapest lowest power NAS that will run PMS is probably Seagate Personal Cloud which does a brilliant job. It basically looks like an external hard disk & costs about the same but is actually a NAS. I used a 4TB Seagate Personal Cloud as my Plex server for about a year until I moved to Plex Cloud then to a VPS after Plex Cloud was canned.
Would this work?
Synology 2 bay NAS DiskStation DS218j (Diskless) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076G6YKWZ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_xxqlDbN7MT31G
Plex has the option to let your machine go into a low power state (mine also goes into sleep mode for windows 10 PC)
You can also use a netgear nighthawk router as a plex server, i’m not sure which model that is.
That what I also have but I only use it for storage.
Yes you can use it as a server but it can not handle transcodes. You will need to direct play everything.
It might handle audio transcode perhaps. Not sure.
Could you further explain when you said “You can also use a netgear nighthawk router as a plex server”? I have Nighthawk AX4. And I’m looking at the router settings and can only find the readyshare settings. Basic (what i use right now) lets me simply plug my hdd into the router via usb and then stream it from there, but my mac mini still has to be on and act as a server for plex. readyshare vault doesn’t matter because im not looking to back up and readycloud is for NAS hdds only. My hopes went up when you said that the nighthawk could alone act as a server.
Edit: Im looking at youtube right now and its only mentioning that the X10 could do it and i dont see the option to install plex on my model.
Yea maybe the nighthawk x10 is the only router I suppose, but I do not recommend it.
Your best bet is NAS, a hdd and server into one.
I do not know about mac mini, but with windows I can have my server go into low power state if it was idle for specific amount of time (I usually put it 30mins if not used then goes into low power state).
I really thought mac mini would be power efficient, if plex does not run, it will not consume a lot of power, but only when plex is streaming will it use high power.
Anyways, if you’re really wanna cut cost in electricity, easiest way is to turn on and off plex when you need to use it.
If not, then I guess you could go with NAS.
Your better question would be how to have your mac mini go into standby/hibernate/sleep when plex is not streaming.
You could also use an Nvidia Shield TV (Android TV) to be used as a Plex Media Server, a client (plex player) and a hdd (you can expand storage with usb). That thing is a monster! And its really powerful for its use.
This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.
