Help with Plex Media Server setup?

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kman84

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Jan 1, 2014
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Hello all,

Long time lurker, first time question-asker. I have a question I hope someone can help with.

I am trying to setup a home media server, using Plex at the heart of it. I have a ton of media on a hard drive, and Rokus installed throughout the house with the Plex channel installed. I have 3 laptops, and 1 desktop that I use for general computing. I have a spare desktop that I have been modifying to as as the "server pc", as I don't want to bog down the existing desktop. Here are my questions:

The "server pc" has a fresh copy of win7 installed and a large hard drive full of media. Is the only connection I need to make is to the router? I dont' need a seperate monitor or mouse for it right?

When I want to add more media to it, what is the easiest way to do so? Do I literally need to hook up a monitor, mouse, and external drive? The drag and drop?

How do I set it to stay on all the time? And is that safe?

thanks for the help!
 
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yupa4242

yupa4242

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Apr 15, 2009
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Greetings kman84, I too post very seldomly but like you I am In the same predicament much like your setup. For the last year I have been using and loving the Plex app tied to my Roku 3 but not without some recent disasters. I had been using my main rig an aging I-7 920 O/C for both Hub to Plex and torrenting rig that I would leave on 24/7. I use a secure overseas torrent site and tax the rig heavy to keep and maintain a positive ratio.

The problem I see in your setup is there is no redundancy unless you have a shelved hhd sitting with a backup. Overtime your PSU may crash or your main hdd for being on 24/7. You will need a cheap monitor and mouse yes to get things going again when those nasty windows updates shut down your machine. I would like to know myself if Wake-On-Lan could be implemented with your pc. Over the last several months I've been weighing the need to build a cheap media server god knows there's dozens of builds in these forums.

My rig crashed last month and this is where I'm going with our problem , first the hard drive started with a S.M.A.R.T. warning then the graphics card started overheating (thermal paste went bad). I did loose half of my converted MKV Blu-rays and a lifetime collection of *.mp3 and recent *.flac. I never had a backup plan ready for my content. Currently system is working again but not without some new changes. Main rig temp is serving my Plex needs only when I am home, rebuilt a older duo-core xp media rig to handle all torrenting which now is networked to main PC. I have a shelf copy of my 3TB video Library until I can get a media server built.

If you don't go for a media server I would get a Platinum PSU and look into WOL (like i said i don't know if it will work with DLNA though) , have a backup option.

Media Sever build would be best option though :)

You can of course go the pricey route and go with a all in one pre-built server like the Synology DS214se Personal NAS Server. Keep in mind not all the NAS boxes will support transcoding that Plex needs so check the forums.

Many have spoke highly about the Drobo units but a friend of mine went through 3 units same model and had nothing but headaches with the hdd reporting errors. I've seen alot of nasty reviews more than positive ones about there tech.

For 500 to 800 bucks (not including hdd) you can build either a FreeNas http://www.freenas.org/ or unRaid http://lime-technology.com/ media server.

As for me I want to get the most out of my PlexPass account so I'm planning on on a FreeNas Media Server but I too have more questions than answers but I get alot of help here as well as other sites about Home Theater PC's .

I know thats alot to ponder but you and me both have to weigh the needs of each of our systems and make a proper choice.

 
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kman84

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Jan 1, 2014
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Thanks for the reply Yupa4242, and sorry to hear about your data loss; that's a terrible feeling. Since I oringally posted this, I set up a temporary solution with my old Del Dimension 4600 running Win 7, and its been working OK so far. The PSU is pretty old and weak..not too confident in it. You are absolutely right I do need a back up solution, I have been reading up on how to back-up to a second internal hard drive automatically, still a little confused about it. Currently I run everything from an external HDD until I get a more permanent machine.

To answer your curiosity, yes WOL does work with my setup and has been great so far! Apparently the WOL setting is built into my BIOS as a default so it was easy to setup with the ROKU WOL app. The only issue is, it will not wake from a cold shutdown, only from hibernate. that is OK I think though since hibernate uses such low power anyway.

Good luck with your future build!
 
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kman84

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Oh, also finding that my PC is having trouble Transcoding the video to my ROKU, I guess the hardware can't handle it. I converted most of my video to MP4 and just do direct play.
 
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yupa4242

yupa4242

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Try lowering the transcode rate in the advanced section of PLEX app but the bottleneck it likely running the HHD via and external connection. USB2 or USB3 or esata?? I've read that unless your using USB3 or a Thunderbolt drive there will likely be some latency.
 
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kman84

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OK thanks I'll try that. My hard drive is USB 3.0, although the PC is not so I likely doubt that it is doing me much good. I am planning on building a rig with multiple internal HDDs, one for back-up. Do you know if Win 7 has a native data back-up solution I can run, or there a different app that is preferable? thanks.
 
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yupa4242

yupa4242

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Not sure on that one I'll have to research that one as well , good luck :)
 
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