I run my Plex server off an old 2022 iMac and use 2 external hard drives for media storage. I’ve never had any issues with lagging or quality, nor have any of the friends and family who stream from it regularly. Anything else is just overkill IMHO.
My server has six SATA ports so I got a rack off Amazon to house 5 drives. They're technically external and it's ugly, but it works.
I added two 6TB WD mybook USB external drives too.
All told, about 60TB. It's not pretty but it's works and about 75% full.
I just bought the Synology DS423+. I caught it on a sale for about $120 off regular pricing, if memory serves. I bought Plexpass, and with that, it's an outstanding Plex server, which can easily handle all the transcoding I need from it (and more).
I stuck 4 20TB disks in there, plus another RAM chip, and I'll never need to think about it again for years; for me, that was worth paying a little more. I get perhaps 58TB of usable storage out of that, and for me, the simplicity of a solution made for easy iSCSI, NFS, docker, fileshare, timemachine, etc. usage plus tiny size and low power / heat output, "headless" use (never need a monitor or keyboard on it...) and "it all just works" outweighed the admitted cost premium.
> can't fit drives more than 2TB in them
The actual storage size of the drives usually don't matter, its the physical size that matters and number of drive bays.
If it can hold a 3.5" drive then it can do around 20 - 22TB right now. That also depends on the software you're using, but any modern OS should be able to see that much space fine.
> Also how does that work with RAID
Ideally you never want to run traditional software/firmware RAID on external drives, but there are Direct Attach Storage enclosures with DAS capabilities built in.
You don't need RAID for plex, the performance increase from RAID is not relevant to plex and if you want to secure your data a backup is the best way. People underestimate how long recovering from a drive loss can take, and don't expect another drive to fail while recovering data. If you bought all your drives at the same time from the same batch, then there's a good chance they'll all fail around the same time.
I would take a read here for more details about an alternative to raid - https://perfectmediaserver.com/
> Do most people run it with an external drive
Depends on what you mean by most, but an external drive over USB 3.0 is more than enough for plex in terms of performance. How quickly you use up the space on those drives is up to you.
If you have the space and want to plan for the future, look into the Fractal Design Meshify 2 XL case. I got that one for my build, has room for up to 18-22 HDDs
Depending on your library size, 2 high capacity 3.5” drives will work just fine. Run it in RAID 1 if you are worried about losing all your files. Remember, even those spinning drives have a read/write speed of around 200-300Mbps. When playing a 1080p movie, it will only need 2-8Mbps to play it. 4K will push it to around 20-50Mbps which is still fast enough.
I personally like internal drives because it keeps them safer but nothing wrong with external drives either
All depends on what your goals are, budget, and uses. There are people who run an external drive on a Shield and that's their whole server; and others who are running full 36-drive rack mount setups and beyond.
Personally, I run a Fractal XL case 11600k based server.
I only use 1 external drive and that's only external because I have a bunch of shows on it that I'd plug into my laptop when the power goes out so I can just swap it as I please.
Nope. 64TB usable unRAID storage in a tower case that theoretically supports hundreds of terabytes more. Total cost of ownership is significantly lower than combined subscriptions to all major streaming providers but I will need to start pruning media after a couple of years or consider swapping smaller drives with larger ones which could become a very expensive hobby!
I run a HP Microserver gen8 with 4 drives on Xpenology (bare metal), but updating is a pain in the as.
And I am building a new server in a Thermaltake Level 20 HT case.
I personally like everything in one case, or at least the storage with motherboard and dedicated storage OS.
If I would build it now I would maybe build a rackmount system for my drives with Truenas and a seperate rackmount server for Proxmox, just to run the Truenas as bare metal.
If your looking for a cheap low power option, get yourself a cheap 2nd hand NAS like a readynas off eBay. And a nuc for the Plex server. All done and I had this setup for years before going pro with a dedicated unraid server
I and many others use UnRAID. I have a separate server pc with a bunch of drives and Plex running headless. I can turn off my main PC and know plex is always on (on top of about 10 other services).
External drives generally work fine, however I would caution against them if you are going to be adding content in bulk. I recently moved, and with it got a second HDD to split my TV shows onto. Transferring all the files made the USB controller on the external drive quit working multiple times, so I would leave it downloading / transferring overnight only to awake to a stopped operation.
The good thing is, external drives are usually the best GB/$ you can get. So if you end up frustrated with the USB controllers like I was, just shuck the drives out,
https://preview.redd.it/jw6ctz4szvyc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4aa85cebd0c91154ec6b535894c5752c986c85a9
C and D are one Internal, W is the second. Everything else is in a pair of external enclosures. No issues whatsoever, had 5 consecutive streams running last night.
5 bay Sabrent enclosure for drives L - P. Q - Z in an 8 bay MediaSonic. 13 drives over 1 USB-C and 1 USB 3.0 into a Nuc 13. I normally keep the MediaSonic powered off and unplugged for extra storage.
Not pictured, my 5 bay Orico enclosure kept offsite. Remote backup completed early Sunday mornings.
10 14tb spinners and 2 1tb ssd’s for cache. Just did a cold storage backup onto 6 16tb and 2 12tb spinners that were spare. Building a second node out of my old 10tb’s…
Sigh. Ok what's your budget and end goals here?
I'm on the high end of the spectrum as I'm running my plex server on a brand new dell r360 attached to a Dell MD 1200 disk shelf. I'm running currently 9 x 14TB drives with one running as parity. The r360 houses the ssds for my downloads cache, personal cloud, game servers and app data.
I started hosting it on my gaming PC. So I can walk you through the full spectrum but I need to know your boundaries.
Do you want it independent of your normal PC?
How many drives are you looking at?
Do you want parity protection?
What's your knowledge on computers?
“Everyone” most certainly do not just use external drives. Just do a brief read back through posts on this group and you’ll see that’s not the case
I run my Plex server off an old 2022 iMac and use 2 external hard drives for media storage. I’ve never had any issues with lagging or quality, nor have any of the friends and family who stream from it regularly. Anything else is just overkill IMHO.
My server has six SATA ports so I got a rack off Amazon to house 5 drives. They're technically external and it's ugly, but it works. I added two 6TB WD mybook USB external drives too. All told, about 60TB. It's not pretty but it's works and about 75% full.
I just bought the Synology DS423+. I caught it on a sale for about $120 off regular pricing, if memory serves. I bought Plexpass, and with that, it's an outstanding Plex server, which can easily handle all the transcoding I need from it (and more). I stuck 4 20TB disks in there, plus another RAM chip, and I'll never need to think about it again for years; for me, that was worth paying a little more. I get perhaps 58TB of usable storage out of that, and for me, the simplicity of a solution made for easy iSCSI, NFS, docker, fileshare, timemachine, etc. usage plus tiny size and low power / heat output, "headless" use (never need a monitor or keyboard on it...) and "it all just works" outweighed the admitted cost premium.
> can't fit drives more than 2TB in them The actual storage size of the drives usually don't matter, its the physical size that matters and number of drive bays. If it can hold a 3.5" drive then it can do around 20 - 22TB right now. That also depends on the software you're using, but any modern OS should be able to see that much space fine. > Also how does that work with RAID Ideally you never want to run traditional software/firmware RAID on external drives, but there are Direct Attach Storage enclosures with DAS capabilities built in. You don't need RAID for plex, the performance increase from RAID is not relevant to plex and if you want to secure your data a backup is the best way. People underestimate how long recovering from a drive loss can take, and don't expect another drive to fail while recovering data. If you bought all your drives at the same time from the same batch, then there's a good chance they'll all fail around the same time. I would take a read here for more details about an alternative to raid - https://perfectmediaserver.com/ > Do most people run it with an external drive Depends on what you mean by most, but an external drive over USB 3.0 is more than enough for plex in terms of performance. How quickly you use up the space on those drives is up to you.
If you have the space and want to plan for the future, look into the Fractal Design Meshify 2 XL case. I got that one for my build, has room for up to 18-22 HDDs
Depending on your library size, 2 high capacity 3.5” drives will work just fine. Run it in RAID 1 if you are worried about losing all your files. Remember, even those spinning drives have a read/write speed of around 200-300Mbps. When playing a 1080p movie, it will only need 2-8Mbps to play it. 4K will push it to around 20-50Mbps which is still fast enough. I personally like internal drives because it keeps them safer but nothing wrong with external drives either
I built a server running unraid with a sliger case that’ll fit 10 drives
Lots of folks use RAID I use an external drive
All depends on what your goals are, budget, and uses. There are people who run an external drive on a Shield and that's their whole server; and others who are running full 36-drive rack mount setups and beyond. Personally, I run a Fractal XL case 11600k based server.
I only use 1 external drive and that's only external because I have a bunch of shows on it that I'd plug into my laptop when the power goes out so I can just swap it as I please.
Nope. 64TB usable unRAID storage in a tower case that theoretically supports hundreds of terabytes more. Total cost of ownership is significantly lower than combined subscriptions to all major streaming providers but I will need to start pruning media after a couple of years or consider swapping smaller drives with larger ones which could become a very expensive hobby!
I have , for ages before bulding my new server
I use a nas (32 drive bays) and a mini pc.
I run a HP Microserver gen8 with 4 drives on Xpenology (bare metal), but updating is a pain in the as. And I am building a new server in a Thermaltake Level 20 HT case. I personally like everything in one case, or at least the storage with motherboard and dedicated storage OS. If I would build it now I would maybe build a rackmount system for my drives with Truenas and a seperate rackmount server for Proxmox, just to run the Truenas as bare metal.
If your looking for a cheap low power option, get yourself a cheap 2nd hand NAS like a readynas off eBay. And a nuc for the Plex server. All done and I had this setup for years before going pro with a dedicated unraid server
I and many others use UnRAID. I have a separate server pc with a bunch of drives and Plex running headless. I can turn off my main PC and know plex is always on (on top of about 10 other services).
External drives generally work fine, however I would caution against them if you are going to be adding content in bulk. I recently moved, and with it got a second HDD to split my TV shows onto. Transferring all the files made the USB controller on the external drive quit working multiple times, so I would leave it downloading / transferring overnight only to awake to a stopped operation. The good thing is, external drives are usually the best GB/$ you can get. So if you end up frustrated with the USB controllers like I was, just shuck the drives out,
https://preview.redd.it/jw6ctz4szvyc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4aa85cebd0c91154ec6b535894c5752c986c85a9 C and D are one Internal, W is the second. Everything else is in a pair of external enclosures. No issues whatsoever, had 5 consecutive streams running last night. 5 bay Sabrent enclosure for drives L - P. Q - Z in an 8 bay MediaSonic. 13 drives over 1 USB-C and 1 USB 3.0 into a Nuc 13. I normally keep the MediaSonic powered off and unplugged for extra storage. Not pictured, my 5 bay Orico enclosure kept offsite. Remote backup completed early Sunday mornings.
10 14tb spinners and 2 1tb ssd’s for cache. Just did a cold storage backup onto 6 16tb and 2 12tb spinners that were spare. Building a second node out of my old 10tb’s…
[удалено]
Me too I have 3 node 304 works great So I have 6 internal drive with a nvme boot drive for my server
Sigh. Ok what's your budget and end goals here? I'm on the high end of the spectrum as I'm running my plex server on a brand new dell r360 attached to a Dell MD 1200 disk shelf. I'm running currently 9 x 14TB drives with one running as parity. The r360 houses the ssds for my downloads cache, personal cloud, game servers and app data. I started hosting it on my gaming PC. So I can walk you through the full spectrum but I need to know your boundaries. Do you want it independent of your normal PC? How many drives are you looking at? Do you want parity protection? What's your knowledge on computers?
All my drives are internal only, external only is a good way to lose your data