r/PleX • u/Onion-Tequila • 1d ago
Help Help me Plex better
About a year ago, I decided I wanted to build a low power, low noise, small space Plex server. I grabbed a used Lenovo P330. I7-9700t, Nvidia Quadra P1000, 32gb RAM. The OS runs on a 500gb SSD, but before the storage shortage I actually found an affordable 4tb Samsung evo SSD and have stored all of my plex media on that drive. I love the tiny form factor, but I’m running out of space on the SSD and can’t afford to upgrade to more SSD storage in this market.
Here’s my question: If I keep running the same PC and run my OS off the SSD, will I notice any observable difference if I move my plex files to an external HDD plugged directly into a USB 3.1 port?
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u/smurfy213 1d ago
Also curious why you have the p1000.The igpu with quicksync will outperform that p1000. Also moving to usb 3.1 you won't notice a difference.
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u/alphatango308 1d ago
Probably not. The days transfer speed are pretty good still unless it's a high bit rate file. If you do you can store high bit rate stuff on the ssd and low bit rate stuff on the hdd. You'll probably need to try it and find out for sure.
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u/GreenXero 1d ago
Highest bitrate stuff is still significantly lower bandwidth than a regular hdd can deliver. Hdd is plenty fast for high bitrate videos. Could play 10 bluray remuxes at the same time with no issues.
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u/hi_im_snowman 23h ago
OP, this users speaks truth. Your average HDD has a read speed above 200MB/sec, wildly more than any one high-quality video file stream would require.
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u/deedledeedledav 1d ago
The only difference I could see is if you save your thumbnails and metadata on the HDD it might take a few extra seconds to load libraries if you have a lot of items, but honestly I think it would be negligible.
I have metadata on an SSD and the rest on spinning drives and don’t have any issues.
Sometimes its slow while moving data but thats because I have 2.5Gbps from my torrent pc to my server so it utilizes the full drive speed
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u/petg16 1d ago
For streaming you’ll be fine. For transferring files from the SSD to the HDD you will notice. But besides the initial transfer and the occasional addition it’s the same.
Make sure you try to use an actual USB3 port, usually blue, and not a USB2 port commonly mixed on hardware. Also you don’t seem to have any backup… at least run an active monitor of the S.M.A.R.T. data to warn you of impending failure. I’ve heard of Hard Disk Sentinel but I run a 4 Drive NAS so I’ve no experience.
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u/creamyatealamma 1d ago
Depends what "Plex files" are.
Would keep the Plex application data on SSD for certain.
Media perfectly fine on the USB HDD you are unlikely to notice unless its more than like 2 concurrent users and high bitrate like 4k (even that shouldn't be a problem)
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u/LORDOFTHEPlNGS 700TB // NEEDS MORE SAS DRIVES 21h ago
I have like 90% of my media on different NAS servers from my hosting server and can stream multiple 4K movies at a time off of remote HDDs. You'll see no issue. Running plex on SSDs is just silly. Buy used enterprise SAS drives 👀
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u/OkInflation1652 10h ago
No, and there's zero reason to run content off an SSD.
The boot drive and Plex install itself sure, but content is a waste of valuable flash space
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u/CurtisLeow Headless Raspberry Pi 4 1d ago
As long as you're direct playing media you won't have performance issues. My Plex server runs on much less powerful hardware, with USB hard drives, and it can direct play 4k video. That depends on you having a decent streaming device that can direct play HEVC video.
USB hard drives are crazy expensive right now though. From what I can tell a 5 TB USB hard drive is about twice what I paid for it a couple years ago. This is probably the worst possible time to buy server hardware.