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I don’t have any movies on the actual hard drive of my MacMini…only on external hard drives…but i noticed that when I’m adding movies to an external drive I’m simultaneously losing room on the hard drive of the MacMini as well? A friend said that it has to do with thumbnails or something but how do I change that setting? I’m almost out of room on the Mini HD and don’t want any more information to be stored there…only want it on my array of external HDs on which I have plenty of room. Help?! Thanks in advance!
Hey there! You helped me with my last question so maybe u can help with this as well…I realized that when Im adding movies to my external hard drives I can see that they are going onto the correct HD because the memory is ticking down…but why am I also losing memory on the HD of the MacMini itself? And how do I change that? I dont want anything stored on the actual Mini itself and Im quickly running out of space! Thanks!!
Adding media to your Plex Media Server from an external/network drive won’t create an actual copy on your system drive.
You should however see a few additional megabytes of storage in the server‘s data directory… this will mostly be for related artwork (e.g. posters, backdrops) and preview thumbs (if enabled). Over time the data directory will grow in size; last I checked mine was about 40-50 GB, users with bigger libraries have reported significantly bigger data directories.
How do I change that so that nothing is saved on my System drive? Even after the new movies finished transferring to the external drive I can see that the memory on my MacMini hard drive is still ticking down!! It wont be long before I have no memory left on the Mini…
Are you sure this is coming from Plex and there’s no other apps involved?
As for the server data directory:
You can’t get rid of that without breaking your server. There’s ways to move it to an external drive using a symbolic link… however that’ll impact your server’s performance/responsiveness or render the server useless in case that drive isn’t connected / takes too long to spin up.
I see…yea this 2021 MacMini is ONLY used for my Plex and my library is massive. I have nearly 10000 movies and about 1000 TV shows, as well as about 700 Kids movies…comes out to roughly 30 TB. I only have about 46 GB of memory left on the Mini HD and its still ticking down bit by bit even tho nothing is currently being added. Just cant figure out why stuff is being saved there or what it is…or how to slow it down…thanks for ur quick response u helped me a lot on my previous issue
You can disable preview thumbs and let Plex delete existing ones… that should have a significant impact on the folder size (while impacting some of the server/client features (e.g. no preview on the timeline / when fast-forwarding)
Ok I did just disable the preview thumbs…how do i get plex to delete the existing ones?
For each applicable library:
- open the library configuration (
…>Manage Library>Edit…) - go to the
Advancedtab - click the red
Delete thumbnailsbutton at bottom of that dialog
Ok! Once again thanks for ur help! Ur the plex ninja!! lol…just out of curiosity…how big is YOUR library and have u had the same issue? And what happens if i run out of space on the Mini HD simply from thumbnails? I literally use the Mini for nothing besides plex.
Much, much smaller… just a few hundred movies and a few dozen shows.
If your server runs out of space it’ll no longer work properly. You should however see issues with the Mac itself before that. Before that happens you should look into expanding the system drives or move your data directory to an external drive (probably taking some precautions to ensure the device isn’t accidental disconnected/ejected by your Mac…)
Ok thanks!!
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