How To Upgrade Your Plex Server With A New NAS!

So I off loaded Plex to a mini computer using Ubuntu/Plex it has 2 2.5 gbs nics which connect to a 2.5 switch that my nas is connected to, nas has 2 2.5 nics also. Plex media folders are smb shares on the nas. The computer is an Intel cpu with graphics about 150 on Amazon

Love what you explain, but.....would you happen to have steps for someone like me who just bought a NAS (Synology DS1522+) and I used to use my PC for the PLEX server (was trying it out), but now when I migrated all of the media files over to the new NAS......if I shut down my PC, everything disappears. I am doing something wrong, but not sure why. Any step by step instructions would be great. Thank you for this video though. I am still very new to this.

DS920+ appears to be the best 4 disk nas for plex but is no longer available. What NAS do you recommend? DS423+ or DS923+?

Great video.Very helpful

I also grew up with The Last Unicorn and can straight up quote it from memory. I watched the VHS so much it wore out. I got the DVD when I was in college - game changer. I want to say this may have been the first movie I ripped to my Plex server way back in 2012....

How are you doing hardware transcoding? I thought the new Synology boxes didn't have Intel chips and don't support it.

I have a Plex server within my HTPC. I have some much larger drives ready 2 x 14TB and 2 x 12 TB ready for a NAS but currently all my data is on my HTPC is on Windows. Have you ever done a video about transfering data on a Windows PC to a NAS where I would probably want it in RAID 5. I'm a bit paranoid about losing data which has been collected over many years.

Nice video. I have been a Plex user for years but have never made it accessible beyond my home LAN. I would like to but have concerns about security. What are your thoughts? ( maybe would make a good video? ) Thanks, Tony

Love Plex. Be careful with Synology though. I had a similar synology box in 2016 or 2017 and ran into some issues. My setup had my drives running RAID. One day the synology box just died. Not the drives, but the actual enclosure housing the drives. I pulled the drives out and all were recognized in another computer. I did not reformat because I didn't want to lose data on those drives. I contacted Synology. They confirmed the box itself had died and offered to ship me a new one. Great. I got the new one and dropped my drives in thinking i would be good to go. Nope. Drives were recognized, but I couldn't access my data. I called Synology back to see what the deal was. The person i talked to said that when the drives are formatted they are "married" to that specific NAS via encryption. You can't just drop the drives in another box and have it work like before. I googled everything i could think of and tried everything i could to get into the drives using UBUNTU but was never successful. I ended up having to reformat the drives to get my NAS going again and i lost all my data. ALWAYS KEEP A BACKUP. I ended up getting rid of the synology and went to a PC build running TRUENAS that i have in a PC server rackmount case. If something goes wrong with any components i can just drop the drives in another machine and keep going like nothing happened.

Great video setting up Synology NAS running Plex. Another great option is to repurpose a PC by running TrueNAS with Plex installed.
This can be a great low cost, easy to use system that will come in at a reasonable price point. Fast, stable, and easy to set up. It could be a good alternative solution.

Thanks for this video. I use Plex but my videos are all stored on an external hard drive connected to my PC, which isn’t ideal. I’d thought about installing a NAS but it’s always ended up in my “too hard” basket. This has been the inspiration I need to go ahead and do it.

i have a DS920 but my hardware transcoding is wierd on docker :| some clue :P i use jellyfin server in docker but i dont think jellyfin use the hardware transcoding :|

Good stuff! I see tons of people recommend people start using Plex and stop the conversation there, so it's great to have something simple, but dense with information to start pointing people to as a reference.

I've also never seen that spreadsheet, so I'll be excited to find and dig into that.

I am not sure if this is still true, but I think the way via a docker container on your NAS is recommended over using the "native" Plex server app running on your NAS. Why did you not go with docker? @ShannonMorse

Love Plex, been running it for years on my truenas server, it's such an easy setup.

Thanks for sharing: very informative. Blessings on your day!

Have you considered jelly fin?

Well done video. Thanks for the informative content.

Great overview. I went through this same process last year. Great tips on the port forwarding and keeping the name the same.

Good stuff. My only addition is that some drives are louder than others, and if someone keeps their NAS next to a TV as a media box, they might want to go with fewer, slow, and quiet instead of many, fast and noisy drives.

Nice video tutorial like always!! Let me know when you put the old Synology NAS up for sale 😅

Liked most of the detail, but find it weird that even though you are using synology for their "special sauce" decided to stick with RAID instead of SHR, and also for the drives if you are looking to save money go for the enterprise version. They are cheaper than NAS versions and have better performance and warranty. i.e Exos over Iron Wolf.

Tech is more complicated then its ever been. The information online is a moutain of millions things. I did a video on shoping for a pc build and in the process realized how much information is out and confusing it all is. for some one that knows nothing its daunting and probably would be easier to just not even try.

Just started hitting limits on my first server set-up, this is perfectly timed! Thanks! <>

r2d2 was offended when you called that cpu slow. jokes

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Although I use unRAID, this is a very insightful video. Thanks for the information!

My Plex Server is always my old laptop. Just attach an external HDD, and it's great for our needs.

The best and only hard-drives to put in a NAS is Seagate Ironwolf!

Does it really matter for NAS drives if you use CMR or SMR?

I finally spent the $80 (great sale) and got PlexPass. I also have two servers running. I Built a PI4 server a while ago, and just re-did it the other day. I also have a server on my gaming rig. I put the PI Server out there because I really didn't want my gaming rig being powered up 24x7. That PI-4 seems to handle a single stream (that's about all we ever see here) at a time even in 1080P. I have NOT tried 4K because I'm still trying to figure out how to get 4K encoded using MakeMKV and HandBrake (HEY, There's a topic for you Snubs!).

Other's have asked "Why don't you just run Plex off your NAS". Well, because it's a Drobo, and the Drobo-FS (5 Bay) did NOT support PLEX natively. Since the death of Drobo occurred earlier in 2023, I am very much looking to buy a new NAS. My Drobo has been ROCK SOLID since buying it back a decade ago, but I know if I'm not proactive it will die on me, leaving me high and dry attempting to rebuild my libraries over months. It is a slow beast compared to others, but it was designed as a true file NAS and not a server/NAS...which is what I'm now looking into. Probably go with the 5 Bay Synology, and I have a pair of older SSDs I can use as the cache drives. Looking at the 8TB Ironwolf Drives right now as I've filled my current 10TB of space and haven't put my latest 4K movies on it yet...because...out of space. LOL...

More PLEX vids would be great Snubs...how you did your customization, organization, etc. Also an update on how the Synology is working out for you (I'm sure it's doing great).

jellyfin gang here!

How did you know I need to upgrade? This is great, thank you!

Good time for this video since Plex is kicking people off Hetzner cloud. I don't recommend a Western Digital NAS because their software doesn't have enough versatility for advanced users.

So thorough! Well done Shannon. Felt like I was watching a lecture, and thats a good thing lol.

Look at Backblaze. They publish hard drive failure rates-- even hard drives that were shucked out of external enclosures!!!🤗

I looked at Synology, wasn't terribly impressed. I settled with the Asustor Lockerstor AS6706T GEN2 which has 6 drive bays and 4-M.2 SSD slots which can either be allocated to storage or as buffer. Also has 2- 2.5Gb Ethernet ports or can install 10Gb Ethernet in place of the M.2 SSD card caddy.
PS--There's also a "Plexamp" app to stream your own Muzak!!!🤗

i switched from plex to jellyfin, works better for me and its free. works well on a synology DS1821+ in a docker container, for remote connection to my jellyfin media-server i use VPN

😻😻😻😻😻😻😻

Good info you come with in the video :)
If i was buying a new NAS now for a media server i would not go for any NAS that can not do hardware transcoding. You will need it eventually, or if you have x265 encoded videos (movies). The on ei got cant do HW transcoding and its a pain to watch high quality (at least 4K, x265 or even some x264) movies and even sometimes tv-shows.
When it comes to Plex. Shop around, a lot, before deciding or at least before considering buying Plex Pass.

Nice Shannon

Good video Shannon !!