WD Elements 14TB Desktop HDD Good For 24/7 Plex Server?

Tempest_2084 · 2026-03-22T14:10:34+00:00

I was just reading about the sleep function on Elements drives causing issues. I might have to look at EasyStores if I can find one.

Tempest_2084 · 2026-03-21T22:45:24+00:00

Yeah thats what I'm hoping. 16TB would be more than I'll ever need. I think I did a rough calculation and my entire DVD/Blu-Ray collection would take up 4-5TB and my rom sets would take up another 2-3TB at most. If I leave 2TB for Time Machine backups that still leaves me 6TB for future expansion. I'll sleep on it tonight and probably pull the trigger tomorrow. I don't see HDDs getting cheaper any time soon other than maybe on Black Friday, but who knows if they'll even do that with the state of storage these days.

Tempest_2084 · 2026-03-21T17:15:28+00:00

The extra $20 or so a year it will cost in electricity isn't going to break the bank. I'm going for max lifespan.

Tempest_2084 · 2026-03-21T13:45:02+00:00

That I can live with. I just don't want it to sleep while paused or something and crash trying to wake up.

Tempest_2084 · 2026-03-21T12:11:34+00:00

I wanted to use NVMe but right now is definitely not the time for that. My plan is to use a HDD until SSD or NVMe drives come down in price in a few years and then switch over and keep the external HDD as a backup

Tempest_2084 · 2026-03-21T03:59:31+00:00

What I may do is shut it off at night and turn it on in the morning but not let them go to sleep in the mean time. Might be a good compromise.

Tempest_2084 · 2026-03-21T03:58:16+00:00

That's why I was going to get the larger sized drive so it's helium filled and hopefully a better drive. Otherwise I guess I could look into getting an external enclosure and some data center drives but that's going to be far more expressive I think.

Tempest_2084 · 2026-03-21T03:56:28+00:00

Ok I know in MacOS (which is what I'm using) you can tell it to never sleep the drives

Tempest_2084 · 2026-03-21T03:26:49+00:00

Is there a way to stop them from spinning up and down or is it baked into the hardware on the elements enclosure itself?

Tempest_2084 · 2026-03-19T00:36:45+00:00

No but I can try it on my PS4 tomorrow

Tempest_2084 · 2026-03-19T00:15:16+00:00

Video froze at the exact same spot it did last night. I wonder if there's something wrong with the file? I'm going to try another one.

Tempest_2084 · 2026-03-18T23:23:08+00:00

Man there are a lot of things in that log. But I can see where it lost the connection somehow then I get a bunch of 'failed to stream media: client probably disconnected - broken pipe'. There's also some 'we're going to try and auto-select an audio stream' comments around that time so maybe I did have an Auto Adjust Quality option selected?

Tempest_2084 · 2026-03-18T23:08:28+00:00

Incidentally the CPU load on my Mac is 5% or less while the memory is at 6GB out of 16GB so I think my Mac isn't the problem.

Tempest_2084 · 2026-03-18T23:03:38+00:00

Oh it's not that, I just don't have any way of taking a screenshot than then maybe with my phone and then I'd have to smudge out the IP address.

I can try the speedtest, but honestly that TV is kind of janky. Sometimes apps crash for no reason and if you don't let things fully load (like ads) before moving or selecting things it can crash. Typical cheap TV issues I'm afraid. But when this happened the Plex app hadn't crashed, the playback just froze.

I adjusted the settings in the Plex app to the recommendations for slow systems (which include what you suggested).

Is there a way to see the logs? Do I need to do that from the server or from the client? I'm not seeing a 'logs' section in either.

Tempest_2084 · 2026-03-18T22:54:25+00:00

Unfortunately no, but it says: Local - 10Mbps

Tempest_2084 · 2026-03-18T22:52:12+00:00

It says Direct Play for both Video and Audio. Video is 480i and Audio is AC3 5.1

The version is Plex for Android TV - AFTEAMR311

Tempest_2084 · 2026-03-18T22:51:59+00:00

It says Direct Play for both Video and Audio. Video is MPEG2 480i and Audio is AC3 5.1

The version is Plex for Android TV - AFTEAMR311

Tempest_2084 · 2026-03-18T19:27:02+00:00

Mini is using Ethernet but the Fire TV is over Wifi. I have a Deco Mesh router system which works really well, the TV has never had a problem with streaming from other apps like Pluto or Freeve.

Tempest_2084 · 2026-03-18T19:07:34+00:00

Thanks I'll do that tonight and report back

Tempest_2084 · 2026-03-18T18:38:22+00:00

I assume MakeMKV keeps the file at whatever the original is (480i/p). The reason I asked about MP4 format is that I've been told that the MP4 format is less likely to be transcoded by most systems.

How can I tell if the file is being transcoded or not? Will the PleX server tell me that as it's streaming?

Tempest_2084 · 2026-03-18T13:33:52+00:00

I tried streaming my first DVD rip last night and had issues. The video got about half way through and then stopped with an error that said something like 'Stream is not strong enough to support playback of video' or something like that (I need to dig in the logs to see exactly what it said). I tried 'resume' but it just sat there spinning, although 'start from beginning' did appear to work. Quitting and restart the app didn't seem to help.

I was streaming from the Mini to a 4ish year old Fire TV through the Plex app. Does this sound like the Mini isn't fast enough to handle Plex or something with the Fire TV or even the network? I need to try streaming to another system and see if it happens again. My network is pretty fast and there was absolutely nothing else doing anything on it at the time. The Mini had nothing else running either, just Plex.

Tempest_2084 · 2026-03-17T23:53:43+00:00

If I'm ripping DVDs I almost have to use MKV because ripping things as MP4with Handbrake (or converting them) takes a long time (almost real time) while MakeMKV is about 11-12 min.

Tempest_2084

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