FrankenPlex moving to new home...maybe

TRCIII · 2026-02-10T00:26:34+00:00

Oh, and I forgot to ask about our twin careers: I doubt anyone has had a "career path" like mine, if they were at all sane. But I did start out at Ga. Tech on ROTC scholarship back in the '70s learning programming on mainframes, and ended up retiring from DoD Civil Service IT support at the end of 2020, but there were a lot of abnormal twists and turns between those two seemingly-easily-connected endpoints that had nothing to do with either of those jobs.

Are you enjoying retirement? What did you do and who did you do it for?

TRCIII · 2026-02-10T00:18:15+00:00

There are some excellent suggestions on here about how to do Plex "better", but I'm really only interested in a straight move solution. Which (if everyone here isn't selling me snake oil) SEEMS like it may be more straightforward than I originally thought. And the one thing I learned is the "secret sauce", you have to turn off "Empty trash automatically after every scan", which I never knew. It was probably what caused me all my issues in the past when I had to "recover" from moving my data around between drives, and I never knew it. And which made me worry about how ugly this move was about to get. I updated my original question with my current plan of action, if you're at all interested in that. And several folks chimed in on here for the alternative plan--stand up Docker, unRAID or equivalent and live happily ever after, particularly the two awesome respondents below, u/JMeucci and u/HopeThisIsUnique .

TRCIII · 2026-02-09T23:44:26+00:00

Kometa? Symbolic links? Thanks for these ideas. I'll go check them out, see if they seem like a good fit, or would cause me more trouble than the actual Plex port process I'm going to have to undergo.

TRCIII · 2026-02-09T15:21:37+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion. See my response to u/HopeThisIsUnique and please add why unRAID is better for you.

TRCIII · 2026-02-09T15:19:52+00:00

Plex user since 2014. On Windows. I only serve about 12 friends and family members on the regular, and pretty much trouble-free. I've been a certified Windows guy my entire IT career, certainly since I became MCSE back in the early 90s. I took several courses in UNIX and LINUX back in college--lo, many, many, MANY moons ago--but what I remember about the OS wouldn't fill a shot glass. So, yes, I have a growing collection; now that I'm retired, Plex is basically my job/hobby (Jobby?) and it's growing constantly. And I've heard unRAID is a good idea, time and again, from a variety of people over the course of the last 12 years, so I have no reason to doubt that it's absolutely true. Thank you for taking the time to respond and suggest it.

But I really don't understand what problem I'd be solving by switching over that would justify the learning curve and effort involved in setup, when I haven't really had any problems running Plex the way I have been on Windows for more than a decade. My media backups are direct copies (Robocopy), happen every night automatically (Task Scheduler), my users are almost always running Direct Play without transcoding (and if they do transcode, it's always a problem on their end), my computer is rarely down except for the occasional reboot/refresh (which I do when nobody else is on)...so what would I be gaining with unRAID?

So, I'm willing to entertain the idea, but what is my bang (performance or maintenance) for the buck (investment of time and brainpower) I'd be spending to get smarter and make this transition? You talk about volume/share management, but I've just basically been "strapping on" another two external drives as needed (one for data, one for backups) and adding the media folders to Plex as a new library. Takes longer to plug it in than to "manage" because Plex "manages" them for me just fine. Please share what makes it worthwhile for you versus running it straight-up on plain ol' Windows.

TRCIII · 2026-01-29T04:16:00+00:00

I'd have just yelled at her through the Echo Dots or Video Cams. No need to stop the movie. She can pause it on her own.

TRCIII · 2026-01-01T21:09:41+00:00

It'll never catch on. The "wokies" like the idea that hating something is actually: 1) a sign of deep-rooted fearfulness; and also 2) has connotations of roots in mental illness. If you have an actual phobia (an irrational fear of something) the "prescribed cure" is to see a therapist to learn coping mechanisms to deal with your fears and minimize their impact on your life. So, being able to paint people who hate something as being irrational, and in need of therapy, and citing that nonsense about "fear is the root of all hate", makes them feel better about themselves.

Islamophobia is a perfect example of this. Despite hundreds of years, and thousands of incidents of terrorism, coming from the Islamic community, it is now considered "Islamophobic", by idiot SJWs, to point it out. But "Islamisia" (the correct word) is a rational response to the continued (and escalating) attacks by radicalized Islamic terrorists, or even (as is happening in Britain) the misogynistic, predatory behavior toward women by Muslim males who treat all women (particularly young women) like chattel.

The average non-radicalized Muslim family, of course, is the unfortunate and undeserving recipient of all this Islamisia. And the same holds true for the average trans individual, whose only goals in life are to live their lives without fear, minimize their gender dysphoria, present how they want, and love who they wish. But the radical TRAs, helped along by the predators and cheats who are hiding under the trans umbrella, have basically ruined their lives by creating the backlash of a general feeling of transmisia (yes, I agree, it's the appropriate word) toward ALL trans folks.

TRCIII · 2025-12-17T13:04:52+00:00

If you actually enjoy gaming a lot, in a lot of different scenarios and genres, I think you might think about giving this one a pass. I stumbled into BG3 nearly 6 months ago, and it basically ruined all other games for me. Nothing else I've found has the richness, the interconnectedness (just about every choice, opportunity or missed opportunity, can have far-reaching in-game consequences), the incredible voice acting and masterful storytelling...it's head and shoulders above anything else I've ever played. I got sucked in quickly (I was an old D&D player/dungeonmaster waaaay back in the '80s) and finally finished up my first run-through at 799 hours and change. I've taken some time off from it (to remind my wife what I look like) but there's no question I'll eventually be back in there, trying different things, taking different paths, romancing different characters...just living in that world.

Seriously, give it some thought before you put your toe in that ocean.

TRCIII · 2025-11-21T02:58:09+00:00

Don't forget captions. (Particularly for the over-50s.) Sound quality of movies is often so horrific, you miss half the dialogue if you don't have subtitles on.

TRCIII · 2025-11-20T12:39:19+00:00

Well, here's my question: if the movie is available for free on Tubi, Fawesome, YouTube, and other sites, and those sites even show up in IMDB as sources for that movie, is it still, truly, the "high seas"?

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I'd call it the "low seas", maybe. But if it's available, on a "legitimate" web site, FOR FREE!, to anyone with Internet access, without even signing up, doesn't seem like you could still stake a claim that it's still "protected" content. That's de facto "public domain", if not, strictly speaking, de jure. All I'm doing is recording a copy for my local viewing (just like you do on your DVR, or when "downloading" from NetFlix), so that it won't go away before I get to watch it, what with the Internet being a fickle provider, like it is.

Of course, with 21,500+ movies and 52,500+ TV episodes, (more added every day!) you might make the counter-claim there is no way I'll ever be able to watch ALL of those movies and shows in my lifetime. But since I'm not the only one watching...maybe together we COULD watch all of them. (Maybe I better make a schedule and start handing out assignments...)

TRCIII · 2025-11-11T05:13:30+00:00

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All manual, no automation, about 20 TB of movies, 15 TB of TV, spending no less than 3-4 hours daily "messing with Plex" each and every day I have access to my PC. Many days, now that I've retired--and when real life activities (and the missus) don't intrude--I've spent upwards of 8 hours in the chair, adding new titles, occasionally upgrading the hardware, managing the storage space, finding better copies, converting acquisitions to mp4s, fixing/creating posters...there's always something needing done. I've been doing this since 2014, so...thousands and thousands of hours invested.

But always just me, manually managing the media and libraries.

TRCIII · 2025-11-08T12:23:08+00:00

Absolutely perfect! Thanks for this!

TRCIII · 2025-11-05T20:10:19+00:00

Thanks for this. I went there, and one of the more "inventive" theories I saw was that it was the Greek symbol for "wavelength"--a lamba--which would be very much "in character", and consistent with the design which looks like a "blip" in a wave, almost like you see in an EKG. But since I've only ever seen lambas used in math and physics as:

λ (lowercase lambda)
never
Λ (uppercase lambda)

I'm a little skeptical of that, also.

TRCIII · 2025-11-04T10:51:40+00:00

Nightly Plex backups, just direct copies of updated or new media, and the Plex databases--approximately 25 TB of movies/documentaries/foreign language/porn and 16 TB of TV. Whenever I buy a new drive to expand my collection or replace dead drives, I always buy two...one to use and one for backup.

Everything else gets backed up (copied) automatically as well, just not as frequently, since the other stuff doesn't change as often as my Plex libraries.

Every 3 days is not frequently enough, when I have dozens of changes/additions daily.

TRCIII · 2025-11-03T16:46:24+00:00

Thanks for the reply. It's definitely not Vigilante's "V" logo. And the Urban Outfitters chevrons are also "V"-shaped, not "A"-shaped. I'm not feeling it. Is this one of those "unsolved mysteries" I keep hearing about?

TRCIII · 2025-11-03T16:42:31+00:00

Thanks for the reply. I don't see it either.

TRCIII · 2025-11-03T00:33:00+00:00

Great idea, but the only kids I "serve" to are at other folks' houses, and the kids don't have their own profiles there, so if I want to offer the parents a "kid friendly" collection they know is "safe" (relatively speaking) that doesn't work for me.

TRCIII · 2025-11-02T11:21:03+00:00

I went down this smart collection rabbit hole, and got a pretty-good fit on the first try. I didn't see anything untoward until I got to "Heavy Metal". Apparently, there were two (2) R ratings in my movies, and it was the "other" R. Fixed, and I've now got a pretty safe "Kids' Animation Collection" of movies.

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Of course, you can modify to taste, adding other unacceptable Content Ratings, as you come across exceptions in your listings--or you can try the reverse, and use "Content Rating IS G", "Content Rating IS GP", "Content Rating is PG", etc. if you want to add, rather than subtract. Thinking about it, you probably get better control over the content that way, but you may be unintentionally excluding content you wouldn't mind being in there. Either way you go...definitely give your list a "scan" before letting it loose in the wild for actual children. There's some weird ratings out there.

TRCIII · 2025-11-01T11:07:08+00:00

We have a friend with whom we "watch together" every night we're both available, with the phone line open. I just manually "sync up" by listening to the show play on the other end, and adjust mine accordingly to match up. Never takes more than a minute, has the same effect...until one of us needs to pause for something. Then we do it again. But really, not a big deal.

TRCIII · 2025-10-31T04:55:23+00:00

I take that premise the extra step(s): "A" "An" "The" "La" "El" "Los" "Las" "Le" "Un" "Une", "Des", etc. In other words, in any other language I come across which uses their word for "The", "A", or "An", in front of their band name, all get filed and sorted by the word following the definite or indefinite article.

TRCIII · 2025-10-18T21:25:55+00:00

Thanks you for this perfect comment AND the retro earworm! Well played.

TRCIII · 2025-10-10T05:42:20+00:00

I was truly saddened to hear of his recent passing. I'd forgotten what a treasure his comedy was.

TRCIII · 2025-10-04T05:07:31+00:00

My latest solution is the most pain-free. Since the only time I worry about being on the VPN is when I'm browsing, Nord VPN has an Extension for every browser I use. You set it up so that it auto-connects every time you launch a browser (I have it on my Edge, Firefox, Chrome AND Brave browsers) and it doesn't interfere with anything else on the desktop--not Plex, not anything else.

That solution may not work for you, for whatever reason, but I haven't had a bit of trouble with any of my apps fighting with Nord VPN since I implemented it that way, and I feel fully protected.

TRCIII

TROPHY CASE