Is the WD My Cloud PR4100 Still Good for PLEX in 2022?

[@NickandAnna]

I've had this since May of 2020 and upgraded the ram from 4gb to 8gb. I've been highly impressed. With over 1200 movies of all 1080p quality, I'm able to generally get things to work. Only problem sometimes is with subtitles.

[@US_Joe]

I'm impressed. Hope WDC will give Syno and QNAP a nudge. What about DTS decoding? Audio decoding can be as much of a concern as video. Although I know Syno is business oriented, but even their so called "media" units are lacking with Video Station.(applying for an API application for data scraping, as well as Codec restrictions) Thank you sir. BTW: Best wishes for that extreme storm hitting you guys.

[@jebril]

I got mine in 2021 for 450 I can't find it cheaper than 700 used on eBay now. Didn't know I was buying an appreciating item with technology but it's that good for the price, this thing shits on any other NAS box for Plex especially if you got it for under 500, I'm surprised it didn't get as much attention as it did when it was cheap, people were still recommending Synology's NAS which were double the price for less performance on Plex and still are recommending those systems. If the main goal was a Plex server this was the GOAT for an affordable straightforward option. And I think Plex or media consumption is the biggest quality of life improvement people will immediately find with home servers, it straight up saves you a ton of money in the long run and is way more practical to have all your media on one interface with the ability to download subtitles and use offline. No brainer.

[@ahmeterhanarik]

it's 2024 and i am deciding whether to get one or not.

[@patricklyons7683]

Just brought a second hand one with two WD 8TB drives from 2020. Looking forward to using it & streaming old films l've got on many other HDDs.

[@Christ_TheGreat]

Thanks for the review. I've been wanting to migrate my home server to 2 small PC and a NAS, so It take less place. I saw this NAS and I was wondering if it could handle my couple of plex transcoding. I only use 1080P or 720P video file. Thanks mate, I think I just found my device! :)

[@fedepetit]

I own a WDMyCloud single bay 8 TB…a month ago I upgraded to OS5…and I’m amazed that ancient device is faster and more efficient than a Synology DS220J. I don’t use Plex

[@michaeldooley231]

Transcoding will improve depending on the folder used, if the defaults are use it uses the hard drives to transcode. I use a 4gb ramdisk in the tempary file system which makes a massive increase in speed. SSH into the NAS and create the ramdisk and set the target folder in the Plex settings. #create ramdisk folder cd / mkdir /tmp/ramdisk #create ram disk sudo mount -t tmpfs -o size=1648M tmpfs /tmp/ramdisk swapoff -a

[@mikedevonish5673]

Very interesting. Could you eli5 this for me? I'm quite interested in setting up what you described. Thanks in advance, if at all possible🙂

[@anonamos6086]

As others have stated, I’ve owned this NAS for several years. Upgraded to 16gb RAM (completely unnecessary for Plex) and upgraded the fan. My only complaints about this system is the nature of Linux. Adding Plugins to Plex is impossible. Docker is unreliable and has caused a bunch of issues with my system. As a straightforward Plex server only, it’s great. I have over 2200 movies and 120 tv shows and sometimes stream to 6 devices at a time. It works great.

[@jebril]

Also to get anything on it outside of the supported apps you have to SSH into it and it immediately breaks warranty when you do, and it's super easy to brick once you SSH it into. People try running sudo apt-get update or something on it and it bricks the system because it's not a typical Linux box.

[@lambdaplus440]

Pretty happy with the PR4100. It handles Live Photos and Dolby videos from an iPhone. But yeah, no intelligent AI searching, unless you signup for a 3rd Party paid service.

[@ivanluhi]

Great follow up. Can this run with 2 2.5 SSDs? A silent NAS is priority... Also, can you run a torrent client on it?

[@EduardoRubioLogan]

Great video ! I have a terramaster f4-210 and this is not power enough for subtitle encoding ( anime in japanese with susbtitles ), So o I started using the F4-210 to simple storage and placed a SBC Pi4X with windows and plex, get the job done with 1080p or even 4k ( with out subs)

[@erickbostrom4049]

Ya' got this PR4100 3 years ago and the OS5 went fine a few months ago, but then another auto-update, bricked it, WD said out of warranty, tried the 4/40 reset, and over a week with "tech support" all done with WD, QNAP here I come, Beware WD hardware beyond the drives.

[@ozell214]

Same thing happened to me. Firmware just bricked it. WD no help. Want to give me 20 percent off.

[@Christ_TheGreat]

I can tell you, qnap has a few fail also. We were selling alot of NAS at one of my job, and I had few that died during an upgrade process.

[@karlcx]

i'm looking to get one of these now in may 2022 - and am wondering if a device released in 2016 is a good buy simply due to its age. will it continue to be supported software and OS wise for much longer, or is this device simply too old and too far into its lifecycle to responsibly purchase at this late stage?

[@NickandAnna]

It definitely works. I'd recommend.

[@MrJonathanwarriner]

I have 4tb ssd… would that fit in a bay?

[@Jumpondees]

Was this with Stock RAM, no upgrades?

[@anonamos6086]

Plex seems to be CPU based with the PR4100. I upgraded to 16gb and found it to be completely pointless.

[@brotha1984]

I had the 2 bay version of the model the pr2100 about a year ago my gripe with it was it couldn't transcode 4k files and I couldn't update the plex server to the current version it just crash maybe i had a bad one but return it and settled for the Synology Ds720+ very satisfied

[@elfwyn8707]

is there a way to force the server to buffer more video ahead of time? I personally would prefer to wait 4-5 minutes for the video to buffer completely instead of having to wait during playback every 3 minutes.

[@US_Joe]

I may be wrong, but I believe the file doesn't start buffering until it is PLAYED, meaning it's time "to go to work". Just opening a file does nothing. Regards.

[@elfwyn8707]

@@US_Joe Yes, I meant after starting playback. It does buffer ahead only until a certain point. What I don't understand though is why it stops buffering? Is there a way to increase that buffer size with enough RAM in the machine?

[@US_Joe]

@@elfwyn8707 Sorry but no. It's the nature of the beast. When you pause anything (especially computers) you are telling the CPU to stop processing - regards.

[@elfwyn8707]

​@@US_Joe I found the problem in the client. The Plex Web App only buffers about 40 seconds worth of 4K material ahead. When I use the Desktop Application there seems to be no visible limit and the whole video is cached very quickly.

[@US_Joe]

@@elfwyn8707 Nice work! I apologize for my previous remarks. I was speaking in very simple terms and simplistic analogies being unfamiliar with you. I wanted to say it depends on the developer of the software but wrongfully supposed you wouldn't get it, to which I am obviously wrong.

[@rickslife]

Problem with this unit, support ends in 2026. Why would anyone buy it now?

[@nascompares]

Because 'cheap', 'bargain', 'special offer' and 'big price drop' are in town...

[@yoshy2628]

I've just bought it. (449€, without hdd's) My 218Play is quite slow, I need an upgrade anyway, anything else is too expensive. update - I have returned my PR4100 and bite the bullet with DS 1522+, also ordered 2 x Samsung 980 1TB PCIe 3.0, I have already 32 gb soddim in house for it, and 40 TB hdd's, I am prepared. WD PR4100 is history, was cheap but the value is no longer there, in 2-3 years will become obsolete.

[@h_d_]

Noob question - WD PR4100 or Synology DS923+?

[@yoshy2628]

@@h_d_ my 2 cents, and I'm not an expert - buy a unit that can serve you at least 6-7 years. If you buy something that is already old and with no software support then you will change it in few years.

[@h_d_]

@@yoshy2628 You are right, but I will go into TrueNas direction. I have tested PR4100 and DS1522+ last week, I have returned both of them. At least PR4100 was better at JBOD data transfer as Synology, and that was a surprise for a 7 years old model. Synology it's selling garbage for an overprice.

[@svgmateYT]

this is now priced at £520. Diskless aswell.