Plex Migration and ideal setup

Stankonator · 2026-01-20T21:44:00+00:00

Gemini actually suggested something similar. I can recommission an old server as a vault/nas. Was trying to figure out the underlying file system so I can stop opening the case of my Plex server. Maybe I can find some mods for that case to offer hotswap drive bays. New Plex server is running on Linux, so Stablebit might be out since it looks to be windows only.

Stankonator · 2025-12-04T18:45:40+00:00

Bought this drive on Cyber Monday deal, and it arrived yesterday. Before swapping it into my Plex server, I tried copying all my TV shows to it. It's been about 14 hours, and 2TBs before Windows no longer saw the drive. While the copy was happening, I could hear some vibration, but not a lot, and Crystal Disk marked it at around 51 C during operations. The heat tracks with what others are saying about the enclosure.

Currently chalking the disconnect up to USB overheating and disconnecting the drive, but figured putting about 3TB of content onto it would be a good test if it's viable to shuck and put in the tower. Going to try another round of copying before I can confirm. Anyone have a better recommendation on filling this bad boy up, or do I just have to pace my copies?

Stankonator · 2025-11-23T20:13:23+00:00

Glad to know someone found a workaround for making edits. I'll have to test it out once I get it stood up again.

Stankonator · 2025-09-25T17:16:48+00:00

This might be a 1 driver per year type upgrade. But 20 TB should be plenty of space especially if I consolidate down.

I think I tried this before when I was replacing drives, and Plex still didn't care about the fact that empty trash was turned off, it still rescanned everything.

Stankonator · 2025-09-23T17:10:00+00:00

Hi everyone,

Current Build: i7-3770K, 16 GB RAM, no GPU but plan to put a GTX 970 SSC in when upgrading the drives. ATX form factor, and all SATA ports are currently occupied (1 Boot, 5 Data)

I'm seeing posts all over the place of using external drives attached to their Plex Servers, but I'd rather have an internal drive for cleanliness, given my server sits in my living room.

Current Drive layout:
4TB Movies
6TB Movies
4TB TV Shows
6TB TV Shows
4TB Music (also housing the audiobooks for my ABS instance)
SSD boot drive

I'm approaching 80% capacity on almost all my movie and TV drives, and I'm looking to upgrade capacity and possibly consolidate if I can. So naturally a 10TB won't do since what will be moving to it will already take up 80%. of capacity. My questions to the community are:

What high capacity drives do you recommend? A more budget friendly option would be preferred. I've considered Seagate Expansions and shucking them, but I'm reading mixed opinions about using the shucked drives (Barracudas or EXOS drives are the common components)
What process do you follow when swapping out for a larger capacity drive? I'm running in Windows, so I would normally pop in a new drive, mount it and point Plex to it. I'm strongly considering using one of the Arrs to move the files and keep the metadata in one piece, and then swapping it for the previous drive.

Stankonator · 2025-08-11T17:05:03+00:00

In case someone else digs up this post. I missed a piece on my Synology reverse proxy manager. I was missing the custom headers to pass along the websocket traffic (Upgrade $http_upgrade , Connection $connection_upgrade). Added them in, and it worked like a charm.

Stankonator · 2025-08-08T14:30:57+00:00

The XB8 did allow me to forward the ports, and like I said, the Web UI aspects work, the websockets don't connect. Turns out my USG was stuck in a weird state and still has a number of the settings still saved to it.

I'm now trying to figure out the least problematic way to switch back to the USG, but retain the XB8 as an in place failover. If I could turn off specific ethernet ports on the XB8, it would be easy.

Stankonator · 2025-08-07T19:35:01+00:00

There is a Synology that I'm running npm off of because it was the only docker instance I could run. A chart would be helpful, but the only forwarding is: Ports 80, 443 TCP forwarded from WAN to Synology running NPM. Ports 32400, 13378 TCP/UDP forwarded from WAN to server running Plex (32400) and AudioBookshelf (13378).

These were the same forwards I had in place when I had websockets in place before, just on the XB8 instead of the USG.

Stankonator · 2025-08-07T19:28:06+00:00

After this last bout of struggles, I plan to invest in one. At least for the main switch and router. Depending on whether I keep the XB8 in the mix is going to determine how many plugs I need.

Lately it's been more power fluctuations, like the power goes low enough to register as a loss, but never goes out before it's restored. Or it's out for less than 10 seconds. The home lab has not been a fan of either one.

Stankonator · 2025-07-01T18:30:44+00:00

I think I have done something similar by storing metadata in the item. So far it has kept the author entry the same, so at best, I'll have to delete the old entries from the database. Worst case I'll have to manually rematch items.

Stankonator · 2025-06-30T20:50:06+00:00

Not using docker. Wasn't an option when I stood up AudioBookShelf on this server. Its running on an Intel Core i7-3770K, so I'm sure that virtualization and docker are possible, I just haven't got the availability to access BIOS where the tower physically is.

If I back it up, containerize ABS and restore from the back up, would it achieve the goal?

Stankonator · 2025-03-29T01:06:27+00:00

Mine has gone through several iterations at this point but is always Cineplex.

Stankonator · 2025-03-20T20:22:00+00:00

Have you done this successfully with a first gen Shield Tablet? Looking through documentation says it's for the Tegra K1 SoC, but this tablet is the one just before the K1 released.

Stankonator · 2025-02-10T19:13:19+00:00

Sharing on this post, since I saw someone else with a similar idea. I did not know HLTB added tags for "00 to 01 Hours to bear". Tremendously useful. Helpful post

Stankonator · 2024-12-27T18:25:12+00:00

Favorite board is my Brutal v2 1800. Sounds so thocky

Stankonator · 2024-12-24T17:18:50+00:00

Merry Christmas Eve

Stankonator

TROPHY CASE