@sjp Sounds like we have some of the same things going on. Curious why are you going from WHS11 to 8.1?
Just got to be “that time”.
I’ve run WHS for some time, but used the server for lots of other things, not just Plex. I ran a chat room for a work project for a while, couple of Websites for a few game friends and so on. After a while, I’d installed and uninstalled so many ‘one-off’ packages along the way that a some weirdness was creeping in.
Last straw was Python conflicts - I had two versions of Python running for two other projects, and then Plex started to throw errors that were related to Python. I simply got fed up trying to troubleshoot them all the time, and decided to move all the ‘other’ stuff to a new box, and rebuild this one just for Plex and my Cloud setup.
Given that the WHS product has essentially been twighlighted by Microsoft, I had to decide whether I wanted to stick with it, or move to either Server Essentials or Windows 8. As SE was $400+, I figured $100 for 8.1 was more Wife-Friendly - There wasn’t much in SE that I really needed in any case.
Since the rebuild, everything is working perfectly. For the first time, Tablo live-TV works flawlessly through the Plex channel for remote clients (Smartphone, Work PC etc) - I simply couldn’t get that to work before. My workmates were blown away when they watched Rachael Ray this morning, while I streamed Big Bang theory to another desktop, and Pinky & the Brain to my phone…
Biggest challenge was moving the Database - it’s gotten huge, and takes forever to copy (10+Gb, 100,000+ files, 140,000 folders etc). I may try running an optimize on it later today, just to see if it cleans it up at all. I’m tempted to setup a small SSD in that system to handle the database function…it may speed up overall browsing and so on.
Lat year I lost 2 drives in a matter of weeks from each other. They were my 2 original drives. After doing some research figured it was heat related. I had all external drives going to a 3.0 USB switch. I also figured it may be a power issue because my desktop power supply was not large enough to allow the computer to boot with all the external drives attached. I had to remove the external drives in order to reboot the desktop.
I recently removed all the external drives from their enclosures and put them in a MediaSonic 8 bay drive enclosure with it’s own power supply and built in cooling. I also installed Hard Disk Sentinel. The temperature of the drives dropped dramatically and the computers boots with the drive enclosure attached.
Also wanted a better backup solution. I have used CrashPlan for a few years for personal files but it has taken forever to upload 15TB of media files. It still says 2.6 years left.
Last night I installed FlexRAID’s “Transparent RAID” solution. It pools the drives, has built in S.M.A.R.T. monitoring, and offers drive parity backup in addition to some other nice features. I set it up initially to protect against 1 catastrophic drive failure using a 4TB drive as a parity backup drive. They claim that with this setup I can loose 1 drive, get a new drive, and use FlexRAID to rebuild the lost drive on the new drive. Even when I lost 2 drives it was about three weeks between failures and I had a new drive up and running before I lost the second drive. It was a major PIA redoing hundreds of BluRay transcodes. I hope this works but I also hope I never loose another drive.
I have not purchased FlexRAID yet. It is a 21 day trial. Anyone have experience other similar products?
I’ve gone through several Plex setups over the years with various Linux servers and internal RAID Arrays. However here is the current setup which has been the most stable and easiest to maintain.
Backend:
QNAP TS-469L 4 bay disk appliance, RAID5 four disk array with 8.1TB of space. About half full.
Plex 0.9.11.7.8 server
All our several hundred movies on DVD and Blu-ray, plus dozens of TV Shows on DVD and Blu-ray, plus 800+ CDs (stopped counting at 800), plus our complete iTunes library are stored on this array. Backed up to external disk once per week.
The device does a remarkable job even when transcoding, although it can only do that for one client at a time as it uses about 60% CPU when transcoding. The new generation TS-451 has over twice the CPU power of mine, kind of wish I had the scratch to upgrade.
Frontend:
1) Samsung SmartTV with Plex client. Has been very reliable but starting to show its age, as it is a 2010 model.
2) Roku3 with Plex client. Just bought this a couple of weeks ago as a front end for Tablo. Not impressed with the device at this time, having some stuttering issues on Plex and Netflix videos at 1080p. At least it plays 1080p videos which my TV does not.
3) DLNA clients. I can connect to Plex using the DLNA server piece and stream videos quite nicely. Including direct streaming (not direct play though) to the PS3.
4) PC web client. This client transcodes everything no matter what so a little disappointed with that.
5) Playstation 4 client. Just installed, first impressions are awesome. Direct Stream or Direct Play for most of my content with some transcoding as needed. Quite nice, way better than the Roku3 at this point.
Also wanted a better backup solution. I have used CrashPlan for a few years for personal files but it has taken forever to upload 15TB of media files. It still says 2.6 years left.
@roraniel - I don't bother backing up the media files - they are already duplicated on my pool, plus I have the physical media I could always re-rip from. The time required to copy that much data (not even getting into data caps) would be prohibitive regardless of service. I have a 60/12Mbps service, at 12Mbps, my 8TB would take 3 months at 100% bandwidth 24x7...it's just unrealistic.
@luker - I'm guessing your Roku 3 is using wireless - I was not impressed with the Roku's wireless capability, so I have mine hard-wired and it is generally flawless. I have Game of Thrones ripped in 1080P run almost 12-16Mbps - Roku direct-plays them, and they don't stutter or anything. I have the Roku setup to accept up to 20Mbps streams too. Disk space is cheap however - a second set of drives to 'mirror the mirror' would only be a couple hundred dollars...
That’s why I am trying FelxRAID. The FlexRAID product eliminates online backups. If you have a failed disk you add a new disk to the pool and click restore. FlexRAID will then rebuild the failed disk on the new disk. For 1 failed disk protection this requires that you always keep 1 disk designated as a “Parity Disk” that is as large as the largest disk in the pool. None of your media files are stored on this disk. I assume it keeps some sort of disk image information on this disk. If you want to protect for 2 simultaneous disk failures it requires that you designate 2 parity disk and so on.
I am just gambling that if I have a drive failure, only 1 drive fail at a time.
@luker - I'm guessing your Roku 3 is using wireless - I was not impressed with the Roku's wireless capability, so I have mine hard-wired and it is generally flawless. I have Game of Thrones ripped in 1080P run almost 12-16Mbps - Roku direct-plays them, and they don't stutter or anything. I have the Roku setup to accept up to 20Mbps streams too.
Disk space is cheap however - a second set of drives to 'mirror the mirror' would only be a couple hundred dollars...
Nope mine is also hard wired. Roku Support thinks it is a glitch in the 6.1 firmware. I’m waiting on a fix with a beta 6.1 update to test further.
Hmm. You know I just turned my Roku 3 down to 720p because it was stuttering this weekend and I planned on contacting support. So they say it is a 6.1 bug? I know there is also an issue with the new restart function in 6.1 that hangs Roku 3’s so I would not play with that until a fix comes out.
As part of the ongoing effort to resolve the three top issues with the 6.1 firmware release a week or two ago (Reboot loop; SiriusXM; Video stutter), QA is performing a limited release to these users for firmware 6.1 R2 (b5xxx)
@jbanks25 Yes, and I use 4TB drives that run around $140 to $160 so I am looking for a solution that avoids a 1 to 1 backup ratio. I am in need a fifth drive so 5 backup drives could cost $800. I have been using the WD Purple drives that do not have the Idle3 Timer Issue.
@roraniel - Welcome to the dilemma I help customers face everyday…although at
work, we are talking Petabytes these days…and most of those are backed
up to dedicated disk systems now (VTL), with only the business critical
stuff really going truly off-site.
The trouble is, you are really dealing with already compressed data…so getting much better than 1:1 is going to be hard unless you have a lot of duplicates or something.
At some point, you have to balance the cost of protection against the cost of recovery. If you are backing up to a second local location, do you really need to be duplicating it in the first location ? If you are already running raid (or something similar), are you worried about the 2-disk failure or controller failure scenario ? if so, maybe a second parity disk, or a second redundant controller. If you are really looking to do ‘off site’ backups, either you have to suck-up the time (your upload pipe is only so big) or you have to invest in a tape drive or something like that (and thats way more than a second set of drives).
I went through this exact same thought process. The stuff I cannot get back, like pictures/videos of the Grandchildren etc, those are duplicated locally, and then backed up ‘off site’. The stuff I could do without, but it would be annoying or time consuming to recreate, gets duplicated and I’ll risk a double disk failure (fairly low risk). The rest, either it’s stuff I can easily recreate, or stuff I really don’t need (install media, logs etc) I just don’t waste time copying.
@sjp I am leaning in the same direction. I have used CrashPlan and Acronis to back pictures, files, finance records, ect. for several years now.
I am hoping the FlexRaid Solution is the 1 disk failure parity solution I am looking for, for my media files. Can I replace them? Yes. Is it a PIA? Yes. But I’m not shelling out $1000 for 1 to 1 backup drives. I may add a second parity disk at some point but that is as far as I am willing to go.
BTW. Where in Michigan? I lived in Holland for 12 years, then in England for 4 years, then back to Michigan in Saline (just South of Ann Arbor) for 9 years. I worked in Automotive Interior Design for Prince and JCI. I am now in NC and try to play golf 4-5 times a week in addition to playing with electronics and computers.
Do folks on this thread have any standard Handbrake settings that are used for transcoding of DVD & BluRay rips? I realize it's not a "one-size fits all" type of question, but I'm curious to hear what others are doing.
I might find the forced subtitles for some shows and burn those in (a bit more expensive)
Blu-ray? Handbrake handles Blu-ray?
I rip Blu-ray with Slysoft and then take the file to Handbrake and again, generally speaking I take the defaults. To me, compressed is compressed… keep the original rip if you have to have something good on hand for future transcodes.
(btw, I only own one Blu-ray title, mainly for testing… and only one Blu-ray unit on one of my computers… Blu-ray, it’s like Betamax except this time Sony paid everyone off!)
@cjcox If you download the handbrake nightly (beta) build it handles Bluray and Bluray forced subtitle search. I have been using the nightly build for a couple years and never had a problem.
Do folks on this thread have any standard Handbrake settings that are used for transcoding of DVD & BluRay rips? I realize it's not a "one-size fits all" type of question, but I'm curious to hear what others are doing.
Because my original setup was iTunes ipad/appletv eco system I defaulted to handbrake’s AppleTV2 template (but added a fast decomb – since some TV shows {older 4:3} on DVD didnt decomb the video correctly you get a weird display) … Now that I am using PLEX/Roku we still stick to that convention just to keep the library consistent … I also go the extra step to add meta data tags to the mp4 files (as itunes required it) and use filebot to name all the files properly … Not that PLEX needs or uses the tags … just at this point the majority of my library has them and I want to keep it the same.
I am really liking SlySofts new CloneBD for transcoding Blurays.
It is quick and I really like the targeted file size feature. This is a feature handbrake used to have but eliminated because they felt you should not target file size but video quality level whic is fine for some but most people are concerned with file size.
I have run into a few problems:
1. For no apparent reason it just quits after a few seconds for some BluRays. It just wont transcode it.It has happened to about 3 BluRays since I started using it and I have done about 30 of 40 since I started using it about 6 months ago. just reverted to Handbrake for those 3.
2. It created a very small file no matter what I set the targeted file size to for 1 BluRay. Could not figure out why so I had to revert to Handbrake again.
3. It does not have any kind of forced subtitle search. I just revert to handbrake for those as well.
So it has a few bugs and lacks a few features but it meets most of my needs and is faster than Handbrake. I also se no difference in video quality between CloneBD and handbrake transcodes.
@Emairob The Plex forum is very helpful. Sounds like a setup issue. I have been running for a few years and consider to be very stable. When you say it looses connection, are you referring to a Roku or other device not finding your Plex server on your network?
We lived in the Midlands from 1995 to 1999. We loved the UK. I worked with Jaguar managing the launch of the S-Type Interior for my company at the time.
