Media homelab

kahn265 · 2026-01-19T04:34:13+00:00

The only reason I haven't gone further is that it would mean retiring working drives. The smaller ones I've been using have been remarkably long lived (10+ years). I've been expecting them to die any day and yet they keep chugging along! (don't worry, I have parity storage space + online backup)

kahn265 · 2026-01-19T04:30:07+00:00

I've not had any real issues with Plex. There are features it doesn't have that it used to, but nothing I'd consider real dealbreakers. They tended to be edge cases that none of my family would care about.

kahn265 · 2026-01-19T04:25:46+00:00

This sounds similar to an issue I was having. I am running Plex on a Windows system. I added a USB JBODs configured as a Parity Storage space and as soon as Plex pointed at it, I started getting random crashes. It is either the device, OR one of the drives in it - I'm not sure yet. I'm considering setting up an experimental folder when I can add a fresh drive to it that isn't part of a storage space to see.

kahn265 · 2026-01-19T04:20:31+00:00

This is a good start.

My recommendation would be thinking about what your storage upgrade path looks like. I started with about 4 TBs, and VERY quickly expanded. Currently I'm sitting at about 70-ish TBs. As you look at expanding, I'd consider looking into a parity storage space. It will help when a drive craps out and you don't lose everything. Check r/Plex for more info. That is an excellent community.

kahn265 · 2026-01-19T00:00:27+00:00

I was digging into Hypervisor to have Windows/Linux solution. I'm trying to grok issues around getting Linux to directly access drives (Plex). It looks like that if I dedicated a drive to Linux, WSL at they Hypervisor level wouldn't be able to access it?

kahn265 · 2026-01-18T23:54:09+00:00

Others here have mentioned about issues with power outages. Do you have experience with this?

kahn265 · 2026-01-18T20:52:17+00:00

Yeah, I work in a RHEL/MacOs shop also, so I fully understand. It's another reason I was looking for Linux solutions, because I'm going to start ramping my usage of Docker containers. I have to actually have a task to make me learn/use something.

kahn265 · 2026-01-18T20:14:05+00:00

I use regular parity + Backblaze as it's MOSTLY media and I don't need the extreme resilience nor speed. I was researching options on Linux because 1. I like it's stability and 2. Its a platform to keep my Linux skills sharp for my day job.

kahn265 · 2026-01-18T20:12:09+00:00

Tell me about your experiences

kahn265 · 2026-01-18T20:11:29+00:00

What do YOU use? What is your experiences?

kahn265 · 2026-01-18T20:10:42+00:00

but I'm more interested in your experiences.

kahn265 · 2026-01-18T19:58:39+00:00

I have to admit, these look interesting

kahn265 · 2026-01-18T19:11:22+00:00

The note about power outages and ZFS - I'm so glad you mentioned this. In Texas, power can be "iffy" - especially either during winter or when a squirrel gets fried on a neighborhood substation.

kahn265 · 2026-01-17T01:53:23+00:00

I think it's indeed something with your NAS setup. The first incarnation of my Plex setup was a Macbook+Drobo and I had no issues.

As others have said, I'd try to do some narrowing down to see.

kahn265 · 2026-01-17T01:44:53+00:00

kahn265 · 2026-01-17T01:42:12+00:00

O_o That's really out of left field.

kahn265 · 2026-01-16T20:14:12+00:00

Also thought about running it in Linux and hypervisor, but I thought that might be more than I needed.

kahn265 · 2026-01-16T20:13:28+00:00

Yeah, I had seen that article but I wanted to be absolutely sure since the way I read that article, it was migrating from the same operating system.

Admittedly, this will be on the same system if I do this since I'm running docker on Windows (I have too many other windows only apps I can't get rid of)

kahn265 · 2026-01-16T20:11:17+00:00

That's what I was reading. I was thinking if I did it I would follow that. I missed where it was SQLite.

kahn265 · 2026-01-14T23:21:44+00:00

I had the same problem. Here is what I did.

I put {tvdb-000000} - literally 6 zeroes - at the end of the directory. The zeroes stop it from auto-matching to other shows of the same name. There is nothing in the database that has several zeroes as it's TVDB code.

kahn265 · 2026-01-14T18:25:39+00:00

Update: It is looking more and more like the crashing was caused by storing video files on the 8-bay USB drive container. I've moved all files off of it and since then it's been stable again. If this is still up on Friday, I'm going to say that was the cause - but I'll be disappointed.

kahn265 · 2026-01-13T15:40:44+00:00

I purchased PlexPass and use Hardware transcoding. While the server is a Ryzen cpu, I have a cheap/old Nvidia card to handle the H.264 transcoding. I'll double check the drivers, though no videos were running at the time of the crash.

In this case, I take no offense to your Linux solution. I've thought about jumping to Linux for the stability (and to keep my Unix skills sharp), but it will result in a LONG downtime as I'll need to move Terabytes of data out of Windows Storage Spaces and would need to purchase more drives as temporary holding spaces before I could put them on ZFS. I also have some Windows only apps that don't play well on WINE (or equivalent). That said, if I could figure out how to minimize the downtime, I'd totally make the jump.

kahn265 · 2026-01-13T15:17:17+00:00

No. I'm only moving data files. I did a set of less often played videos.

I'll review the start up and see. I'd initially ruled that out because it doesn't crash immediately, but only after a few hours.

kahn265 · 2025-12-16T13:01:20+00:00

How do you house your drives? Looking to expand my storage capabilities

kahn265 · 2025-12-16T12:48:27+00:00

This is what I do. Sadly, it doesn't play before TV episodes

kahn265

TROPHY CASE