5 First Plex Media Server Build Mistakes

These are some mistakes that can cost you time and/or money when building a dedicated Plex Media Server.
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#Plex #Server #Mistakes

[@allcool27gaming]

1. Plex Does Not Require Tons of Ram 1:34 2. Old Graphics Card or With Not Enough Graphics Card Ram 5:05 3. Not Enough Storage 7:30 4. Back-Up Battery 9:09 5. Your SATA Cable Could Be The Real Problem... 11:15 Additional 6: SSD for Plex Data 14:10 *Please add to video description*

[@ilseparatio2963]

thanks dude, fuck the entertainment...im here to get some shit done. youtube channnels become a waste of time

[@CS-ep3ku]

real mvp right here, thank you

[@hyperayjay1]

thank you, why is it hard to just be presented the information without all the sidetracks and rambling!

[@Max34557]

"8GB is still doable" meanwhile my Plex server is happily running in a docker container with 2GB, works flawlessly! Have about ~20 users.

[@TheVoidofNothing11]

4k or 1080p?

[@thenegotiator9701]

Mine runs on 4gb for Plex and unraid total. Had 8 but I needed the ram and didn’t want to buy anymore.

[@appyviral8753]

@@thenegotiator9701 hi

[@skorpion1298]

I have Plex on Ubuntu with an Ryzen 5 3400g and a 1050Ti 16GB RAM. Set transcodes folder to /dev/shm/ to save SSD wear. Works perfectly. Patched the nvidia driver and can run up to 6 transcodes at the same time. While watching a 4k 40MBit video and transcoding it to 1080p 20MBit and looking into the transcoding folder it generates a lot of small 50MB files. Ram is slowly filling up but while watching a movie it never fills up above 2 or 3 GB of usage. Easy peasy.

[@Widur42]

You cannot say RAM does not matter and then say, 16 Gb is the BARE MINIMUM but 8 Gb is also fine. How is anybody supposed to draw useful information from statements like that?

[@Akkbar21]

This dude is overkill crazy. Unless you are hosting 20 concurrent viewers, this is all overkill.

[@Naddel81able]

7 Seagates running 24/7 since 2017. No problem so far.

[@ZorinInc]

I ran Maxtor drives exclusively until Seagate bought them out. Nothing but Seagate since then. 1 or 2 failures in the last decade is perfectly fine by me.

[@grambo1980]

I’ve had failures across Every single brand

[@nsomniac281plays]

Worked in a pc repair shop for ~6 years, Seagate are by far the drives I saw the most of dead, BUT, they are almost exclusively used by OEM builders, espescially in laptops, where most hdds are abused by people whom do not understand how to properly care for them, it makes sense that they have a pretty high failure rate.. on another note, I still have a working 8gb maxtor bigfoot 3.5" Ata 33 drive, LOVE IT.. its soooooo loud when it spins up..

[@decipher-me]

I had more problems with Western Digital. Especially with the 4 TB version. It just died afte like 60 Days running. 2 Times. Than I bought Seagates and they are running 120 Day now.

[@drewbenedict2246]

video starts at 1:30

[@GranVlog]

thank you. idk why they keep talking so much

[@RightAsReign]

I’m running Linux lite on a 16yr old core 2 with 8gb of ddr2. Firefox running on the desktop with Plex media server in the background 700 MB average . Never goes above one gigabyte ram usage. Been running plex server on that old Dell OptiPlex coming up 10 years and it just won’t die. It although it can only transcode 1 or 2 streams at once it generally doesn’t do any transcoding because all my media is 1080 and streamed original quality. It manages simultaneous 4 streams in my house easily. 6tb nas drive and 128gb ssd for OS. Its only job is to be a plex server and has never failed me since paying $50 for it off eBay 10 years ago. The drives cost more than the pc lol

[@lavoice21]

This Guy... Man... Your videos have gotten so much better and your on-camera performance, so confident. I stopped watching your videos more than a year ago, because there was some awkwardness and cheesyness to them that I couldn't shake off. But man. I'm back :) Great work man. Thanks for all the work.

[@austinhunt2538]

“It has to be said for that one person who is running their plex data on a 2 tb drive” Honestly I feel attacked because that is my exact set up

[@Moonwired]

Very good not so much Plex stuff but more serverbuilding tips.

[@codyparks2288]

Quit bashing on Seagate. LTT just threw a gazillion into his storage server and you just had a WD die on you. Your audience is smart enough to know they are second tier and priced accordingly and that's why we have tons of them and want to build a NAS/PLEX server.

[@BradleyFoord]

Cody Parks then seagate drives are like £360 GBP each though!

[@aure_eti]

well it doesn't change the fact that segeate have the highest faillure rate for 2019.

[@codyparks2288]

@@aure_eti Exactly, nobody has stated otherwise. Backblaze proves that with their quarterly failure rate report, yet they are still using/buying them per their price per gigabyte. They are good drives (wouldn't recommend their 12TB thou) but they are still second tier and priced accordingly. Definitely not horrible drives thou. ​ Bradley Foord Sorry to hear that. In the states they are the cheapest, then Toshiba, WD, and highest is HGST.

[@Felix-ve9hs]

8:50 but i never had a Seagate HDD fail, only WD, Toshiba and Hitachi ...

[@kenzieduckmoo]

Seagate is one of the better brands. Hating on them is a meme.

[@johngaltline9933]

@@kenzieduckmoo Not exactly. Their current drives are as good as anything on the market, but they had some epic level failure rates in the early 2000's. Folks that have been around the block still don't trust them when other brands offer competitive products at competitive or often cheaper prices.

[@kenzieduckmoo]

@@johngaltline9933 well yeah, 20 years ago they were bad. But then so was WD back then, with their slow Green drives.

[@johngaltline9933]

@@kenzieduckmoo The Green drives were/are slow, but they were never unreliable. I still have all 5 of the 1TB Greens I bought around the time they came to market, all still working perfectly. 3 of them are in my unraid array now, 1 is an external usb drive used for a work archive, and one lives in my main desktop, unplugged with a working, all needed programs and updates copy of my C drive, just in case my boot fails and I need to be running. While the current generation of Seagate drives are as good as anything else, they lost me as a customer for consumer drives after having several drives fail over the corse of a year. I run a large number of constellation 10,000RPM and 7200RPM SAS Seagate drives, but still refuse to buy their consumer products or any new drive from them.

[@crckdns]

Their barracuda drives were crap, I think he is referring to them.. There was a 1 of 3 failrate.. for me 3x 2gb were dead after 5 months, 11 months and 15 months. (I've had backups only of one of them)

[@Lagggerengineering]

8:50 "Unless it's a Seagate, in which case it's gonna die anyways" My over 8 year old regularly used Seagates: *ANGERY*

[@countreekidd]

every single seagate I've ever owned crapped out waaaay too early imho. Which sucked because I usually buy them when there's a nice deal on them...had to stop doing that--now I just don't buy them period.

[@Lagggerengineering]

@@countreekidd Heh, coincidentally all my WDs crapped out but all Seagates are still kicking. Just use whatever you want, nobody should argue about this. If there are known defective models, then yeah take the advice. Otherwise it's up to you :D

[@eva2k0]

Just a note... I’m running plex on a 10yr old desktop and am able to do multiple streams at 1080p with no issues. Unless you’re doing 5+ at a time I wouldn’t sweat hardware.

[@benjaminray2425]

eva2k0 I’m running an Optiplex 790 with an i3 2120 4Gb ram. I can do 5 lan streams easy, but barely 1 transcode at a time

[@eva2k0]

Benjamin Ray hmm, I can do transcodes no problem. We never have more than 4 going at once though. The cpu was very beefy when new. It was the first gen i7 Nehalim(spelling) architecture.

[@alchemistdavinci5168]

I have a plex server in ubuntu 20.04 with 1GB of RAM and one vcore on hyperV and it runs huge UHD Videos with no issues at all!

[@amateurwizard]

Ragging on Seagate in 2020 is like saying AMD runs hot in 2020

[@amateurwizard]

​@@technicavivunt As far as I know Seagate consumer drives are all Backup drives meaning lost of shingled magnetic recording meaning every write is three operations instead of one. Seagate Ironwolf drives have very clean record the 10TB drive has a 1.01% annualized failure rate

[@kelownatechkid]

@@amateurwizard not true, I have 10TB Backup Plus externals and they're all Ironwolfs when shucked. However you are correct that the Ironwolfs are reliable and perform well.

[@ziaride]

Meh my first Plex server back in the dark ages was built ontop of FreeNAS and only had 8Gb of ram ;) that maxed out my poweredge sc1430 that I'd fished out of the trash bin at work. Worked great except it only held 3 hard drives and the massive power draw of dual Xeons increased my power bill noticeably and really heated up my home office. lessons learned, Second Plex server now going 8 years I went much less CPU power, 64Gb ram and 12 HDs, super quiet, low power draw, low heat, and metadata on SSDs.

[@dividsky]

Nice to see that you mentionned my Rosewill case. it's really cheap and perfect! Also if i may add : #7... backup your entire nas. my nas is 27TB and each week, i'm mirroring my nas to another one. because i don't tell you what i'll do if ever i loose my datas. ;)

[@StrangeIndeed]

I set up Raspberry Pi 4 with 4 gigs of RAM and one old HDD and it works fine for now. I'll upgrade this modest setup to something with far superior specs in the future c:

[@nutech39]

I recently built a dedicated Plex PC using a Ryzen 5 1600 on an ASUS Prime board, 2x4gb Ram and an MSI Gaming GeForce GT 710 1GB GDRR3 64-bit video card. So far, after 2 months, I've had no issues.

[@elwefetaccio6750]

im seeing this video 3 years later and i have had every single headache he mentioned. especially the SATA cables, ive knocked them loose many times, however he is quite right, i've changed SATA cables and found out that 2TB drives i thought were bad, powered right up, the file structure in tact and all the files there. i have since moved on to using toaster type hard drive bays. and they are the best. unless that HDD or SSD is completely dead, it powers up and runs !! Great video tips thanks

[@a351must2]

Good tips ... 1. I have 32gb ddr3 on my plex server and it never uses more than 3GB with Windows ... have no where else to put the DDR3, so it stays...still haven't tried out transcoding in ram, but sounds like I should. 2. I have a GTX 1050 and recently recommended a 1650 to a friend ... in both cases it was more a matter of the 75W PCIE power requirement and size of the card. Looks like I miss out on some HEVC transcoding features. 3. Rosewill case is great compared to the alternatives. Mine is pretty old and did not have hot swap bays. I was able to remove the original bays and install lockable hot swap bays. Limited to two X 5 drive bays + a 3 drive bay. Kinda wish I'd had the option for the 12 drive version, but am also trying to stick to 8 drives max and rotating out older/smaller drives. 4. APC SU2200 I bought used for $100 and replaced the $250 worth of batteries ... 5. Gotta admit I've been through my fair share of SATA cables, and it's soooo much better than finding a dead drive. 6. SSD for metadata ... definitely backup to another drive ... my SSD with the DB just croaked hard on me a week ago after running for about 5 years.

[@RemyL75]

Been following your Plex videos for years, so I knew all of this and even seen you recovering from some of the don'ts you listed. That said, my improvements to my original Plex server were: Better CPU (AMD Ryzen is so beautiful) SATA cables (depending on the run, 18-24" with locking mechanism and 6Gbps speed. Also, buy spares!) Drive Expansion: I am still using the same tower case i bought 7 years ago (Xigmatek Elysium) that had cages to allow up to 12 HDDs. I have expanded/modded that to where it now fits 20 hot-swappable HDDs and 4 stationary HDDs with an option to add an additional cage for 4 more stationary HDDs. OS: I am neck deep into UnRaid for 3 servers now and plans for an additional one. Network: 10G network helps with the file transfers A LOT! SATA Card: while the PCIe 1x sata cards were working fine, I switched to a 16-port SAS-to-SATA card and my Parity checks went from 2 days to 22 hours. Also, SSDs and NVMe drives are amazing. Use them when you can and if you can afford them. I think that's it. As always, thank you for the videos. Also, please stop hating on Seagate lol.

[@Im1CrazyCow]

The Seagate RIPs are Priceless..... as for the Sata Cables I have had 5 go bad over the years so I fully agree on that. I changed all my Battery back ups from APC to Tripp-lite BC Battery Back UPS here in FL should be Mandatory and even though I have back up generators on all my properties, I also 5K Back Ups on every server or PC. Yes I know its over kill but when you buy 10 Tripp-lite Commercial Version you get a huge discount! I have everything Plugged into them from Monitors to Modems! Most get me 90ish mins of time except the main which I am adding a external battery bank to boost it to 10k! Good video Jason!!! Cow}:-o)

[@cyberspider42]

I have been running a Plex server for about six years. I run it from a 64 bit windows 10 PC with 8 Gigs of RAM with integrated Radeon graphics and no SSD drive. I get about 4 transcodes with no problems.

[@redcivicsi1]

pretty typical as long as those transcodes are 1080--down to-->720 etc.

[@cyberspider42]

AMD A10-6700

[@briantidey2225]

I run mine on a Synology ds218play with 1Gb ram and it runs fine as I NEVER transcode , play everything direct and it runs fine. Never skips a beat and plays remux just fine . As for Seagate dying. Mines been on 24/7 for 2 years , again no issue

[@RealKanashii]

35317 hours = 1.471,54 days = 4,03 years - 24x7 - read from my Seagate ST4000VN000 SMART info with 0 Reconnections , 0 errors, 0 identifications retries. The other 7 HDD were exchanged by Seagate "VN" 8TB versions before fail once.

[@ivanlopez2859]

Just cause it hasn't happened to you, doesnt make it the norm. You're in the bottom tier minority and I don't think you're the audience for this video. This is for the more power users who share the server with friends and family.

[@LaurenceReeves]

Nice to see a fellow Synology user!

[@RealKanashii]

@@LaurenceReeves They have to improve hardware or I will switch soon to a custom server. Synology got underpowered compared to other brands or custom NAS.

[@LaurenceReeves]

Joan Lorenzo I’m not sure I agree with you there. I wouldn’t touch QNAP or WD nas’s.

[@jokurinopoloski]

uhmm, I use plex on a windows server VM with 4 GB ram. Works flawless!

[@ap90033]

How about a tutorial on moving a Windows Plex Server to Unraid? THAT WOULD BE GREAT!!!

[@sethhowell2278]

This. im about to make that move and it would be dope to see some info first

[@in2quads]

I have the Rosewill 15 internal bay case as my data backup server. I have 15 8TB drives in it and for the price it works great. Not quite the quality of my supermicro 846, but it is a great starting point if your just getting into this hobby.

[@apilgrim8715]

I thought you were going to say 2 gb or RAM, but 8 GB is a lot

[@TheLintonFamily]

I run with 2GB and its plenty

[@alexbinder]

About the UPS bit, I live in Switzerland and the power there is great. I have decided to remove the UPS as it tended to fail more often than the power went out. It was an APC so not a cheap brand.

[@Phelper99]

I'm going to Second the SATA cable thing... As recently as last week, I needed to plug in a drive from a shelf, so I grabbed an old SATA cable and no dice. Grabbed a newer cable from a recent mobo upgrade, and it was fine.

[@garner6583]

Another point to make is the dreeded 4 pin molex power plug. I had a lot of read errors because one of the pins on a splitter had pushed out of the connector. Took me a while to figure that out.

[@elwefetaccio6750]

i've had these issues as well. i got me a few 2 bay toasters, they work really well

[@criptoportugal]

I love plex direct play , no transcoding crap 😁🔆🔆🔆

[@RVSpinX]

@@teknerd for 1080p transcodes (or lower) my 4th gen core-i3 was able to handle it with ease for remote play, but almost all mobile devices can direct play just about anything nowadays.. the only reason I've found to transcode is due to upstream limitations which I don't really have any more, but for any 4k media I want to be available via remote play (non-remote direct play) I just create the lower bitrate version Plex will just chose it to direct play assuming you've set your upload limits correctly. (this is all just my experience, so ymmv)

[@nwolfe1990]

So much hate for Seagate, I only have great things to say about them.

[@ToolocoYT]

I agree with you I've had a 2TB Seagate disk that has worked flawlessly since I bought it in 2014, Now its more of a games drive but I used to run my entire system on that HDD

[@Daramue]

I have several seagates and many of them are about 10 years old at this point. Not a single issue.

[@karim1485]

My portable 4TB failed after after 1 TB? Write? Like whaaat? I only used it for backup, it was never on the road. and at that point the data was stored on that disk only... i somehow managed to get all the data off but that was my first experience with Seagate. I now use both WD and Seagate, same capacity, and will see which one fails first. Still i tend to go for wd if i need to expand..

[@surge21xx]

I had an external desktop burn out, but internal? I only just swapped the one i used in various PC's for 15 years with an ssd, but .... that old drive still works! All my large storage drives work just as well!

[@Povell81]

I would love to know more about the Quadro P400 for a windows plex server. I only use my plex for home photo/ video stuff. Not ripping and playing media content. Any suggestions?

[@bgcorporation]

What sucks is that it seems all Rosewill cases are discontinued. Can't find anything else that's close to it within the same price range.

[@SkrawnCPT]

For all the noobs (incl myself) that have 8gig ram or less, no graphics card, and a mediocre CPU...run plex and see if it works, and then if it doesn't, only buy what you need to make it work before going out and "buying 16gig ram minimum"...🤦🏻‍♂️

[@Zachspod]

I have a old PC that work was throwing away. Running 8GB ram. Old core I3 and runs perfect 1080p. All I did was replace with SSD.

[@asdf51501]

I'm in the process of encoding my old blu rays from the 2000s and am setting up a Plex server. I have a QNAP NAS that doesn't support hardware transcoding, but a RAID 6 array with SnapSync backups to another NAS? I think I'm good. So I think my plan will be to run Plex server from a VM on my Threadripper machine (which does other things too). Alternatively, I'll look for an inexpensive GPU capable of transcoding, or buy an inexpensive NUC that can do it on Intel Xe iGPU.

[@Krolitian1]

I love all the shade against Seagate lmao. So far, all of my Seagate drives have failed and all of my WD drives are still alive and well. All those Seagates failing are the reason I built my NAS.

[@raiscl]

SATA cables! I just got my first issues with that, I had one HD dying on me during summer (Seagate) and in the beginning of the year I started to have HD issues in the same box in a different VDEV. I assumed that the HD was toasted, bought new HDs, replaced and ZFS would spit same errors and unable to resilver. Than I realized it may be the cables... they were not long enough to be comfortable, so more than one was pinched in my build (Fractal Node 804). Living and Learning!! Luckly ZFS kept the data safe during this process =D

[@txag007]

I have the Rosewill 4U case and it is awesome. I have 6 of the bays occupied and 6 still empty.

[@joelcrocker1094]

I did A plex experiment - I have A Spare HP ProLiant ML150 With ! gig of ram and SSD 240 boot - A 1 & A 2 Terabyte drive & 1 gig of Ram - The Video is A GTX 650 TI & the Cpu is A E5205 Xeon @ 1.86 X 2 - I do plan on Maxing out the Ram to 32 & Using both Cpu Slots - I have 3 3.0 usb X 4 for external drives - Windows 10 seams to run fine under this current setting

[@YT-ge6vl]

8GB of ram is still quite a lot if it's your first Plex server. Obviously a lot of people have different needs and imagine a different scale. I find Plex even when transcoding 10bit HEVC 1080p content or running scheduled tasks will not use up much of my 6GB of ram (transcoding 1080p 10bit actually only uses 3.7% of my 6GB), and I run a lot of other server applications on my box simultaneously. If you only plan to use the server within the household and maybe remote stream with another household you could probably get away with as low as 2-4GB of ram for the entire server. I'm sure "ram-transcoding" is another kettle of fish but I don't think the 2 second delay on a transcode playing is worth paying a premium to avoid when you're building your first server. You can always expand on RAM later if you aren't satisfied.

[@Karishin32]

I'd say the average plex user is just direct playing everything. Its all I do.

[@brunolopes2205]

@@Karishin32 id say a lot just use it to display their media in an aestetic and more convinient way.

[@player-ye3hk]

#1 A lot of RAM might not be needed, but it is not really a mistake if you use more. - 8GB is more than sufficient though, just plex you can get away with 4GB or even 2GB easily (at least if you use a barebone Linux setup) #2 Ditch the graphics-card. ESPECIALLY old ones. You will always pay extra in electricity. The additional load of the CPU costs you much less than the GPU when ultilized. AND if you run many streams it is important to notice, that at least nVidia GPUs have a max. of simultaneous encoding processes (2 in case of the 10xx series). My 10 year old CPU can transcode up to 12 transcodes from 12Mbit down to 4Mbit simultaneously and eats about 80W doing that while using ~20W in idle. Finding a graphics card that uses less will be difficult. Especially when they are built for gaming most of them(especiall older ones) eat the 60W in idle... Go with something that has an internal GPU instead (an i5 for example) #3 My case ran out of space after adding 10 HDDs, put the rest of them on top - had my first HDD failure after 7 years. (With another one close to follow which was the 10th drive I actually had installed in the case. Although I wouldn't recommend doing it in general, so far I didn't experience failures that are unlikely to happen when installed "properly". I should say, that the server sits in a room that has no foot traffic whatsoever. So while you are right, you are painting a bleaker picture than is actual reality. And before someone adds "but they loose performance" - no, my HDDs all run within normal parameters just like they do in my servers for work (where everything is actually installed as it should be) #4 Hell no! Unless you live in an area where power spikes (and/or outages) are normal, don't spend your money on that. I've had 3 outages since I installed my first media server ~10 years ago (one time a minute the other 2 under a second). I don't know what you did that caused you corruptions, but I can just pull the plug from my server, boot it back up and everythign works fine with no corruptions whatsoever. Note: If your power does flicker, I would actually recommend buying one - not just for your server but also for your gaming pc if you have one - in order to protect your hardware. If it happens once every few years though (like here in germany) - don't, just don't waste your money. #5 Yes! #6 I would add this: Use Docker Images. You will definitely need to change your system drive or more at some point. A dockerised server will let you copy just one folder (plus one file) and PLEX will run on your new Server (or at least new intallation) as if nothing changed at all. (also nice since you can move it to another SSD if need be without googling how to change xyz-Directory for server software zyx ). It has had issues in the past, but those were fixed one or two years ago. I did performance tests and Plex runs just as fast as it does on bare metal.

[@Bari_Khan_CEng_CMarEng]

#4 - UPS is essential in my opinion for a NAS. I am using brand APC with built in surge protection.

[@muffin6810]

@Shaquir Bourjolly I guess if you are streaming some some shit quality movies and cap it to one just a couple people then sure.

[@0ut1awed]

I just learned about Quick Sync HW transcoding with Intel iGPUs, while looking into the best method to migrate my Plex container into a dedicated system. Seems this has been around since 2018. I'm extremely surprised I haven't seen it mentioned here or in any other of your videos (unless I missed it). Overall it seems to be a relatively niche thing, in terms of publicity at least. I really don't understand this, as having a $100 i3 8th/9th gen that can handle 20 + simultaneous 1080p transcodes seems to be one of the most revolutionary things I've seen possible with Plex. Any plans on doing a video against this? Would love to see this goodness of news spread to all the potential Plex server builders.

[@anthropicPanda]

I believe as long as it's skylake and above, its worth it..

[@nightcorefusion3884]

That is a good recommendation for a case, however, a quick note is that you can easily fit 11 x 3.5" HDDs and 4 x 2.5" drives in a Define R6. Considering that the Define 7 is out now, that case is going cheep. They also support 3 x 140mm fans up front, one in back, one in the basement and EATX motherboards. Depending on dimensions. They also come with sound dampening foam everywhere. My Plex server currently lives in one and I won't need to upgrade until I've replaced my 6 x 3TB with 8TB ones to match the other 5 I already have. After that, then, and only then, will I need more than 12 drives in my system.

[@fchen819]

Sorry but kind of new to all this, when you mention install your “Plex MetaData” onto your ssd so it runs faster, does that mean install the Plex Server App onto the SSD???

[@alexb6234]

Running Plex on a 4th gen Intel i5 and 8GB of RAM and it works just fine. Anyone super spec'ing a Plex server really doesn't know what they're actually doing unless you are using Plex commercially. Works just fine with 3-4 people watching at the same time.

[@brunolopes2205]

someone that assumes their situation is the same as everyone elses is the one that doesnt know what they are doing

[@nebojsaaleksic3533]

Hi Jason I've been playing with the plex server for a while now and I've been following your channel. First I had a version with poor hardware, so then enthusiasm prevailed and a new version of plex server came up with slightly better specifications. The thing I noticed is that the viewing devices (mobile phone, tablet, laptop, etc.) all have higher resolution support. For example, I use a lg 55sk8500pla smart TV which at the time of purchase in my country (2 years ago) cost $ 1350. And he's more than capable of playing all the formats currently in direct play. Now the question is whether you need to spend money on expensive server hardware or simply add that money to buy a better TV and use a plex server with weaker hardware just for direct play. Best regards

[@nightops4ever]

1 major mistake, not trusting Seagate drives..lol. Had to laugh when you mentioned this. Everybody has such mixed experiences when dealing with these. WD's and Fujitsu drives have repeatedly died on me in 24/7 ops. Didn't stop me from trying out the SN750 NVMe...love that thing. Sticking with 2TB Seagate drives. Cheap to replace ($50), and the only reason I've had to replace a few in the last 5 years was because I got lazy when I moved and didn't take them out of my server before moving the rack it was in. Still prefer Samsung SSDs over pretty much everything, but they don't fit my budget for the quantity I'd need for my FS.

[@TheTimeProphet]

I am running plex ok with 2Gb of RAM

[@zgrooms1010]

What block size do you recommend when formatting an HDD? 1MB for large video files?

[@surge21xx]

*makes joke about Seagate drives* Me: I've been using Seagate drives for 20 years and i just replaced a 500gb OS drive that i bought over 15 years ago and it still technically works. Not had any issues with Seagate ever. Also... ssd's are cheap? That's funny. Maybe if you don't need 30TB of storage.

[@kelownatechkid]

SSDs are cheap *for metadata* which is his entire point. You have 30TB of plex metadata? lol

[@9SMTM6]

Gotta say though, I personally never had an issue with it, but the same drive I've been using for like 8 years now (not continuously mind you, and a large part of the time with caching by an SSD, it has ~ 2.5 Y of usage logged in SMART) has failed rather early for my brother and also failed for my cousin.

[@oldtimeengineer26]

how do you copy the metadata over to the ssd?

[@gerydblackmore5484]

Never had a problem with Seagate. 😎

[@bradnoyes7955]

I haven't had a problem with Seagate since the 7200.12 Firmware issues *Knock on wood*

[@gilesleggett]

You are a lucky man.

[@timramich]

People swear by a certain vendor that they love because they had a problem with another vendor. It's all anecdotal nonsense. If these companies were making lemons of products, they simply wouldn't be around for the decades they have been.

[@turbo5546]

I had a fun problem with sata using those rosewill hotswap bays, took me forever to figure out what it was, finally decided it was the hotswap enclosure. as soon as more than one drive would spin up the transfer would stop and give me drive controller errors. I went through so many sata cables and sata controllers and even switched to a sas controller and the problem continued. I finally realized it was the hotswap bay when I pulled the drives out of the enclosure used the same power plugs and sata cables and everything was fine. If only one drive was active it was fine. The funny part is I used the enclosure for a year or more with no issues until I decided to switch to a raid1 in software to protect some of the data and then the problems started.

[@xyeahtony1]

nice dig at seagate even though WD was selling SMR hard drives for their NAS line while seagate wasn't. ;)

[@UKgamer87]

I've had more issues with wd than seagate tbh

[@kymberlailucas1831]

I run my plex server with just 4gb of ram with no problems along side mate, sonarr, radarr, lidarr, ombi, jackett, lazylibrarian, transmission, plexpy, ubooquity, syncthing, and webmin on dietpi installed on a SBC. AND I LOVE IT!!!! Works in and outside my house streaming (direct play only) to another state. Bought a computer (i7 8700, rtx 2060, 16gb ram) for my pms but use it just to game now that I don't have to set it up as a server. Your videos give me so many ideas for my pms. Thx for your hard work and keep the videos coming.

[@JoaoSilva-gs5jb]

PM's?

[@torsi10]

@@JoaoSilva-gs5jb Plex Media Server :D

[@ChrisJin]

Mine runs on 2GB RAM with Ubuntu Server and transcodes 4K without any issue

[@KevboKev]

I store my media in a Synology NAS and have a separate PC for my media server. I didn’t want my NAS CPU running at nearly 100% all the time with Plex on it, since I use it for all my data under a RAID 6

[@KevboKev]

OneDayAfterAnother I don’t know. Just installing the Plex server app on the synology NAS and running one movie, cpu was at 100%. Yeah, they have the server app, but I didn’t want my NAS cpu blaring all day long like that.

[@GuilhermeBorgesCunha]

I'm running my Plex server on an old Dell Vostro with 4Gb of RAM and screen broken. It works pretty well since only people on my house use it.

[@westonsimon8303]

Is it a waste to do an all ssd server

[@johnnyblaze9217]

Yes because ssds may indeed be faster but for what you're doing it wont really improve much

[@robertt9342]

Kinda depends if you have other uses for the server, but yes for media use its wasted. I guess if you have money to burn....

[@westonsimon8303]

@@robertt9342 ya I ended up going all ssd anyway bc I set them up as network drives and used them to store games for my gaming computer as well

[@Dobermann792]

Lmfao if you have money to burn

[@boromaushelms281]

Hi Jason, great video thank you! I am planning to build a Plex server on my Sinology NAS 1621+ (AMD Ryzen V1500B, 2.2 GHz (4 Core) 32 GB RAM, 14TB HDDs and 2 x 512 SSD Cache) which should be fine from an performance perspective. Usage currently is at 1-2% CPU and 2-3GB RAM (out of 32GB) supporting 5 active Docker containers (MQTT, Node-Red, grafana, influxdb, iobroker for the smart home system). What worries me was the point number 2 "grafics card"! There is none, no dedicated card in the Sinology NAS. Will this be an issue or will the CPU cover it? Cheers and thank you!

[@marchettejw]

I run my secondary desktop in one of those Rose will l4500 (non hotswap bay) it works really well and compared to the Dell r230 below it, whisper quiet..

[@Illphella]

your really putting a damper on my new seagate lol

[@pattes4304]

I would like to know the best way to change from a working win10/Plex to an unraid/plex machine. (Ssd systemdrive and 1 new hdd, setup the new ssd with unraid and copy 1 hdd to the new one? And after that the next hdd to the now old empty one and so on?) what about the Plex metadata already exist?

[@acejokerz]

Pättes did that. It’s simple. I think spaceinvaderone has videos of this and how to transfer metadata.

[@jbat66]

Why not build the new unraid/plex machine, and just point it to your files and let it build the meta data? If your media is setup in an organized fashion, the new plex will just import all of it.

[@acejokerz]

Jim Taylor problem with that would be that now you would need two computers to be on at the same time instead of just one

[@pattes4304]

KT is correct. I don‘t want to buy a new machine. And I don‘t want to loose all the seen/unseen flags. Not a very important point but would be nice if it would be still there.

[@TheNewBloodDan]

My experiences has been pretty flawless using an external 8tb hdd and trying plex for the hell of it. Granted it’s on my main pc, but I can just unplug the drive after existing the plex app on my tv or is there a special process ? Also my external drive is on top of my desk, not on the case (just clarifying for my setup).

[@RogueRAZR]

Lol you do not need 16GB of RAM to run Plex Media Server. Especially if you are not transcoding or using HW transcoding. My Linux Plex VM uses ~2% of its allocated 8GB of RAM per 1080p stream. If you plan on transcoding AT all, use a GPU and HW transcode. You also do NOT need an SSD or RAM disk for transcoding. You will saturate your ethernet connection well before you even came close to saturating even a basic multi-spindle raid. My personal server is just running a 12 spindle RAID50 with just 2TB 7200rpm drives. This provides well over 300MB/s read performance. In fact, the last thing I would recommend is and SSD for transcoding as this is effectively a swap task. It will kill your SSDs super quickly. My best advice for starting out on a budget, get a cheap secondhand refurbished/retired Dell R510 or similar. Fantastic starting point, cheap, huge expandability. When you fill up the 12 bays. Buy another and set up your storage in a cluster.

[@tryitout-701]

how do I know if I need to transcode?¿

[@RogueRAZR]

@@tryitout-701 Depends on your target devices and your media quality. If you have people connecting that dont have players capable of playing you media types, or have poor internet connections, or you have poor upload you should consider transcoding. If all your content is fairly low bitrate 1080p probably don't need it.

[@SteveSimpson]

Loved the comment about Seagate. I've been there. I will never buy another Seagate drive ever.

[@zealpatel4714]

Whatttt ! I'm using Raspberry pi 3 plex server for 2-3 screen works great no buffering, just scrubbing takes few seconds.

[@ZozanneAndKPX]

probably a lack of computing power and thus no easy fix

[@iamamish]

Raspberry Pi works fine if you're not transcoding. A lot of media can be delivered without it. Once you start transcoding though, the pi will not work.

[@Akkbar21]

Ya this guy is over doing it you’d think he is either rich and dumb or works for Newegg.

[@Necropheliac]

#3 Hard Drive Expansion: Instead of getting a bigger case and putting your computer into it, consider getting a thunderbolt 3 PCIe expansion card and then expanding to a thunderbolt 3, external raid array. In my opinion, this is a very logical upgrade path that allows you to start small and upgrade later, and still have a relatively small form factor case.

[@Rickety3263]

I mean I “guess” you could? Your goal is to create a Plex server - which reliably hosts media to multiple devices across the network. It makes more sense to build a machine for THAT purpose, instead of just adding more storage to your desktop. There are SO many reasons to not use your personal rig as a server. You ‘can’ of course... but the moment youre dumping money into the project - spend it on the right hardware. A stand-alone NAS/storage server is much more future-proof than an external raid enclosure

[@robertt9342]

I don't see the logic. It would be pricey $ and What's the point of having two relatively small cases tethered to each other. The option is fine for anyone who chooses it, but I fail to see the logical path,

[@mikehosken4328]

I find using enterprise level hardware for plex servers it worth it. I’ve seen desktop hardware fail over and over again. . Lots of second hand servers out there. Once I went to Hp gen 7 I’ve never had an issue. I even have an Nvidia grid k1 16 gig ram gpu card for hardware transcoding and 16 cores of xenon goodness, 48 gig of ddr3 ecc to round it out. All running on cli Debian Linux and costing under $500 without sata drives.

[@deavir]

A good thing to do is help someone else setup a server, also called free backup server.

[@ThatBeardedVeteran]

My first/ current Plex server is just on my 6 year old 4TB Seagate external HD plugged into my 8 year old ASUS laptop running Windows 10. Is that bad? And no I’m not joking, that is my setup and has been for about 3 years now.

[@TwoPointOProductions]

Mine is about the same thing only a almost 10year old Mac desktop. Been running for at least 2 and had 5 concurrent transcodes. I have all the stuff backed up but the 4tb drive runs the show.

[@johnmadsen37]

If it doesn’t stutter it’s fine. Plex doesn’t need much at all. This KZbin guy is just guessing like everyone else. My vm has no graphics card. It is not nessecary.

[@droopie]

for those budget builders, make sure the CPU has hardware passthru not just supporting virtualization but actually passing hardware to virtual has to say iommu: yes

[@greenzrx]

I use a consumer quality NAS, and nfs mount my media to my plex server - which is a thinkcenter microdesktop running linux. no worries on disk expansion - and no need to rebuild the plex server

[@DuarteDiasFerreira]

32 GB for a server running only plex. LOL. Running it on a VM with an Intel nuc as a host. PCI passtrough for the GPU and it takes 4 GB when streaming 8 videos and using transcoding

[@rongarzon7295]

i have a 960 4GB model the GM204 version , is it worth upgrading to a 1050ti or should i spend the money elsewhere?

[@wildcard3237]

what other specs are you running?

[@rongarzon7295]

@@wildcard3237 I5 4690K 16GB ram . 500GB sata for OS

[@wildcard3237]

@@rongarzon7295 i'd probably say say hold off for a while and save to get a processor upgrade, that gpu upgrade will maybe get you 1 extra transcode stream but i'd probably say thats pushing it. if your cash is burning a hole in your pocket you could always pick some extra ram or storage, can never have enough XD

[@rongarzon7295]

@@wildcard3237 yeah thats what I figured , the mobo is maxed on ram at 16gb, at 60 tb in space .I will just save for a bit ty for response.

[@zaphod2002]

If you are only using it for Plex, look at the P4000 cards and you can transcode 20ish streams all on the graphic card. If you are also using for gaming, I am not sure.

[@MC-lr6ju]

I built mine from an old server tower running Windows Server 2019 (upgraded from 2016 recently) with Xeon E5-1650, 12GB ECC RAM, Kingston SATA 256GB SSD, WD Red 6TB (4 drives in RAID 5). No GPU. Mine has been running perfectly for over 3 years with as many as 5 users streaming at 1080p simultaneously with no lag (all users must have Direct Play/Stream enabled)

[@cfltheman]

I had that issue where I keep losing my hard drives on my server. I tried replacing drives and cables, but the problem was still there. I eventually found out I never replaced my power supply. When I finally got one with a higher wattage, the problem was fixed.

[@Lemonspeppasteppa]

Pro Tip: discourage transcoding by your users.

[@BehindTheHeadset865]

You talk about settings like ram transcodes and setting up ssd for cache. I think it would be really cool if you actually did a step by step how to on those topics. I bet you would get a shitload of views.

[@GunmetalSnail]

I've got Plex running on a Synology DS920+ and a UPS is essential for me due to my apartment's absolutely buckwild wiring layout. More than once since I put it together I've had a breaker trip because the AC in the living room is running as well as the AC in the kitchen and the microwave because someone saw fit to put all of those on THE SAME CIRCUIT when they wired up the building. I also have the UPS connected to my modem, and my router so I still have internet/WiFi.

[@ZorinInc]

I use a Synology DS918+ with 40TB. It's almost full with movies. I'm thinking of replacing one drive at a time to expand my total storage.

[@reggieoverton121]

James Hall how many videos are streaming at the time? How well does the synology handle multiple streaming? I would like one however I heard you need at least i7 or better for plex to work when you are multiple streaming. I have at least 4 devices streaming at any giving time.

[@ZorinInc]

@@reggieoverton121 Right now I'm streaming Ex Machina (4k) to one TV, Birds of Prey (1080p) to another TV, & the latest episode of Young Sheldon (720p I think) to a third TV. I have a PTZ (1080p) security camera, and 3 more 2K bullet cameras, ALL streaming continuous video to the NAS. And I'm watching KZbin videos on my computer. My CPU's (PC and the NAS) haven't budged over 10%, RAM is sitting at 8.5GB (PC) and 1.1GB (NAS), but the ethernet is doing the work bouncing between 50Mbps and 100Mbps (nowhere near saturated). The 918+ has TWO gigabit ports, so it's plenty fast enough to the switch. Everything goes it's own direction from there... POE+ to the big camera, gigabit LAN, wifi through the Google mesh, etc. The 918+ is a BEAST! Just make sure you get a managed switch so you can bond the two gigabit ports from the NAS to the switch. Oh, also, I did max out the RAM in the 918+ AND put a couple SSD's in it for read/write buffers (not storage). Storage is just four 10TB Iron Wolf drives, the 7200RPM flavor.

[@reggieoverton121]

James Hall you don’t realize how much this helped me. I have been going back and forth trying to convince myself to buy a synology but I just read in a few places that all synology nas struggle with plex because plex demand so much processing power. Again thank you.

[@dathyr1]

All your ideas are nice, I have no need for a dedicated stand alone hardware server. As being a single user, my PLEX server is on the same PC I use to Operate the PLEX program. I only use PLEX to record (DVR) antenna local TV shows. Once recorded, I edit them, and then store to another EXT hard drive, then delete the content from my PLEX server. With my PC laptop, I7 proc, 8 gig Ram, 1TB SSD, Windows 10, all works great. My server is only on when I am using the laptop. I dont do anything portable or remote, not necessary. I know there are 2 other apps that do the same as PLEX, but will stay with PLEX cause I am used to it and does what I want.

[@That_hondaguy]

Bro thinks I’m rich I got 8 gigs of ram and a core two duo

[@dansan382]

You say not to ever transcode 4k video. Do you have any suggestions on how to avoid that? Inside my network it direct plays but outside my network it always transcodes. Is there a way to stop this or am I doing something wrong? Also would really like to see your best practices on installing Plex on Unraid. Tips, tricks, setup, docker setup, etc

[@patrickneitzel2048]

DanSan382 like you said. Direct play only. If your home upload is fast enough you could directly play outside of the network. Many folks set up multiple libraries. One for movies up to 1080p and another for 4K. You can also use WebTools and other plugins to immediately stop playback for remote streams attempting to transcode 4K. If you go separate library route and have users who don’t know better, you can not share the 4K library with them.

[@dansan382]

@@patrickneitzel2048 I do have separate libraries for the 4k content so you're saying don't share those with outside users and just let them use the 1080p version? It's weird because my Nvidia shield doesn't transcode when watching but the one at my parents house will transcode just because it's outside the network. I'm trying to avoid it from always transcoding and just do 4k at direct play. Not sure if that's even possible

[@skywiseca]

My mistake building one of my current Plex servers? Not using LVM. Just let the OS build itself and it decided not to bother with LVM and now I have to jump through hoops to expand the plex library FS when it fills up.

[@baosli]

As Linus is building a petabyte server with Seagates... LOL

[@Stoney_Eagle]

Why do you think he goes for ZFS2 on a splited array of drives 😂😂😂😂

[@stormk-1130]

So i was lookin at the synology they are expensive lol, and think about making my pc a plex center. What you think about that

[@RonaldRol]

Do you use XFS or BTRFS?

[@djtoo7]

how do you turn off the Plex update popups on the Mac? every time I do anything they pop up…..

[@Sard_Onyx]

Shots fired at Seagate. Do they have significant reliability issues. Or did you just say that because you generally use WD?

[@MrUploader14]

seagates are fine nowadays, but back when 3tb drives were just starting to come on the market they were having drive failure issues where they would die in about a month or less. but they have had that sorted out for a long time, they are on par with WD and even offer free data recovery on their Ironwolf drives.

[@InvaderZim2189]

@@MrUploader14 how about the old 1TB seagates when they first came out? they would shit themselves all the times too

[@TheDrunkenSnail]

I think the 12tb exos did

[@elwefetaccio6750]

i was a victim of this@@MrUploader14

[@Magemo7]

I don't have a backup battery... just an inverter ... and it actually works well. It kept my NAS up during a short outage, just the time needed to powering it off.

[@adfjasjhf]

6:43 is that webterminal part of Unraid or is it something for Linux?

[@Shenepoy]

I never had good wd drive other than my 500gb one I had 5 wd drives fail . I would go Hitachi before going to wd

[@alancheshire1577]

Hi there, I have a windows 10 laptop and a my cloud home which I have successfully installed through my TV. I have also loaded Movies which work through my Tv , Photos which are displayed on my TV however my plex will not in any way pick up my music folder or my music video folder I hope you can help me as it's very frustrating.

[@rene.s.s]

Should I setup Plex server to prioritize 16 core ryzen cpu or 8GB 40-series or 7000-series. Does AMD vs nVidia make a difference?

[@oisdaman4050]

Damn why didn't he respond to this?😮 it's a good question.

[@GhostsGraphics]

For plex go intel if using igpu, nvidia if using dgpu

[@lualgomo3920]

"16 GB of RAM is the bare minimum" ...And I'm here with only 2.5GB :'(

If you use a windows machine as a plex server then you don't need more than 4gb of ram. Windows version of plex is 32bit and can only read 4gb of ram at maximum.

[@lualgomo3920]

@ actually using the Linux version in an old compute a have on 24/7