If I wanted to make my own Plex/Emby/Jellyfin Server for fun what would be the best way ?

ng4ever

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Buy a prebuilt NAS, build my own, or what ?

Thanks.

I know kinda dumb to do it just for fun. It would be mainly for family and friends I guess.
 
I'm just running mine off my main machine. It's super easy to setup and as long as you aren't trying to transcode 4k HDR x265, it really doesn't take that many resources aside from as much hard drive space as you want to dedicate to it.

If you want your own seperate machine, anything that has a hardware decoder/encoder should do the job fine. (Intel Quicksync, nvidia nvenc, lots of NAS's have it.) I also know people who use the Shield as a server but I haven't dealt with that myself.
 
I'm just running mine off my main machine. It's super easy to setup and as long as you aren't trying to transcode 4k HDR x265, it really doesn't take that many resources aside from as much hard drive space as you want to dedicate to it.

If you want your own seperate machine, anything that has a hardware decoder/encoder should do the job fine. (Intel Quicksync, nvidia nvenc, lots of NAS's have it.) I also know people who use the Shield as a server but I haven't dealt with that myself.
I've fought against plex for years, only now is it starting to work right. I have transcode disabled, running it off a dual core ARM NAS to ATV4k and 2 shieldtv's at my house, and to an ATV4k at my girlfriends apartment. Works great except her dsl is too slow to stream the 4k stuff.
 
My problem is I want the media server to be able to be really fast. I guess the best way is use only SSDs but not sure if it is worth it ?
 
I am using an old i7 4770 with a a few 12TB shucked WD Easystore drives with Windows 10.
 
My problem is I want the media server to be able to be really fast. I guess the best way is use only SSDs but not sure if it is worth it ?
fast in what way? streaming media isn't that demanding, you could easily stream a dozen streams from a single 5400rpm drive.
you would run out of gigabit bandwidth before running out of drive bandwidth.
 
fast in what way? streaming media isn't that demanding, you could easily stream a dozen streams from a single 5400rpm drive.

In response I guess when remote controlling it from my main pc. My current laptops as media servers feel so slow. They work but when having to update plex it takes ages. Or windows 10 updates. :(

Maybe I am just too use to my main pc speed?
 
In response I guess when remote controlling it from my main pc. My current laptops as media servers feel so slow. They work but when having to update plex it takes ages. Or windows 10 updates. :(

Maybe I am just too use to my main pc speed?
I do use an SSD for my OS and Plex program and database.
scanning the drives doesn't take too long and I just have it set to scan the drives once a day.
 
I do use an SSD for my OS and Plex program and database.
scanning the drives doesn't take too long and I just have it set to scan the drives once a day.

These old laptops have no SSD. So maybe I should get a small SSD for both of them ?
 
My problem is I am not sure if they would support a SSD and even then I doubt they support more than one drive.
 
Ya, pop some SSD's in them for the OS and Plex database and probably make it snappier.

Sorry my problem is I am not sure if they would support a SSD and even then I doubt they support more than one drive.
 
My problem is I am not sure if they would support a SSD and even then I doubt they support more than one drive.
any machine that has SATA should support an SSD. you just might not get the max speed if you have SATA 1 or 2 on the machine.
I didn't mean put a couple of SSD's in each machine, I meant 1 in each.
 
any machine that has SATA should support an SSD. you just might not get the max speed if you have SATA 1 or 2 on the machine.

True but what about the other SATA hard drive I take out? How can i use it as well for media instead only ? Not all laptops support 2 drives.
 
this is my small setup,
Plex-Local-Storage.jpg
 
True but what about the other SATA hard drive I take out? How can i use it as well for media instead only ? Not all laptops support 2 drives.
you can buy a 2.5" external USB case and use it if you want. those laptop spinning drives aren't the fastest so I personally wouldn't use it.
 
you can buy a 2.5" external USB case and use it if you want. those laptop spinning drives aren't the fastest so I personally wouldn't use it.
Oh ok.

Then what should I use as a main drive for media on a laptop please? Thanks.

Should I buy minimum of a 2 TB SSD for each laptop ?
 
there is a member here selling some nice 6 or 8 bay Synology NAS's, one for $600 and another for $650, slap some 12TB drives in them and you are good to go.
 
Which is more powerful for Plex a laptop with i5-3320m 2.60 ghz with 8 gb of ram and integrated graphics of course or Synology DS920 + ?

Curious.
 
DS920+ uses a quad core Celeron. I'm not sure how it stacks up to a dual core 3rd gen i5 but the newer Celeron probably supports more quicksync encoding \ decoding options.

A laptop really isn't a great choice for any server. Particularly if you are going to need more storage than 1 drive can provide. Sure there are plenty of work arounds, all hacky and not ideal. IMHO get a NAS or an off lease \ refurbed tower. They can normally be had cheap locally or off eBay.
 
I have Plex on a Synology box after hosting my own server for years using old hardware. Setting it up on a NAS is pretty easy. I think the QNAPs allow you to use a SSD for the database/install of the PMS. Synology doesn't allow you the flexibility to do that AFAIK. I've never had a problem with the Synology box even though it is significantly underpowered compared to my old servers.
 
You can build a FreeNAS box and run Plex on it. If you want to do it for fun it would be worth looking into. If you want to get up and running quickly, iXSystems offers pre-built boxes.

FreeNAS has certain hardware requirements/recommendations that work best with its ZFS filesystem - things like using ECC memory. It's way overkill for just a media server, but if you are looking for a project and/or can think of other uses for it, could be the ticket. I host a Minecraft server on mine, run OwnCloud, and use for general network storage.
 
True but what about the other SATA hard drive I take out? How can i use it as well for media instead only ? Not all laptops support 2 drives.
What model of laptop is it? and as mirrored by others laptop is not an ideal plex server (though it would work, like you said its gonna be a bit slow to update/scan).
 
Zero reason to have your media on an ssd, but the OS and plex appdata folder on one is a good idea. I've been running plex on an unraid server for many years with no issues.
 
Zero reason to have your media on an ssd, but the OS and plex appdata folder on one is a good idea. I've been running plex on an unraid server for many years with no issues.
If I had stupid money, I would totally put all my media on a bunch of giant ass QLC SSDs ~still raid, but almost 0 access time and latency and no need to spin down to save drive life? sign me up.
 
If I had stupid money, I would totally put all my media on a bunch of giant ass QLC SSDs ~still raid, but almost 0 access time and latency and no need to spin down to save drive life? sign me up.
I would love to switch all my HDDs to SSDs purely for noise reasons. The HDDs writing/reading are the noisiest thing in my system (I have a super quiet system.)

I actually haven't had an HDD spin down in years. I haven't had any issues with turning that off.
Saving that second of seek time adds up imo.
 
I would love to switch all my HDDs to SSDs purely for noise reasons. The HDDs writing/reading are the noisiest thing in my system (I have a super quiet system.)

I actually haven't had an HDD spin down in years. I haven't had any issues with turning that off.
Saving that second of seek time adds up imo.
Between that and needing like 2/3 the space and 1/2 the weight, a pipe dream for someday perhaps.
 
If I had stupid money, I would totally put all my media on a bunch of giant ass QLC SSDs ~still raid, but almost 0 access time and latency and no need to spin down to save drive life? sign me up.
I'd need some large capacity ssd's for my 60TB's of media. 4TB consumer drives wouldn't cut it. It takes less then 30 seconds for my server to spin up a drive and start playing something. Spinning rust will be here for years to come.
 
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