Separate disc for Video/PLex

Hi,

I ran freenas since 2016 as a basic file store for PC access.

My video folder was accessable on my Fire Cube via VLC with the basic file/folder structure which worked well for many years.

Its 2024 now! What are my options?

I have upgraded to Truenas Scale and my file store is up and running well.

I have not put any video on there yet. Should I put the Video back on the mirror like it was or should I have a separate drive for the media i want to be accessable on the fire cube? I’ll probs go for Plex (unless there are better options) I’d like a UX+ interface on the TV after all these years!

Any help suggestions welcome.

What kind of pool confguration you need depends on a many factors.
Like how much storage and reduancy do you need, what else is your TrueNAS system used for (iops), etc.

On my home nas I have all my media on a 5wide Z1 (16TB disks) + a mirror of 2x 1TB SSDs for the apps/docker containers.

If you go with Plex (which is arguably the best option esp. in terms of client app support) then you also have to look into how you structure your media (filenames & folder structure) for the importers to work.

I like to use TinyMediaManager to ensure that all movies/tv shows are named correctly and come with the correct fanart.
If you provide that then Plex will import that local data instead of pulling everything from the internet where plex can make mistakes (choosing the wrong movie/show) can happen which you need to fix afterwards.

Another question is if you need hardware transcoding (requires plex pass) or if you can direct stream the raw file to the clients.

Just be aware that if your SMB share, and the host path you use to access the storage in the Plex app, have the same name you could run into problems:

Not sure I understand the problem.

When you host your media on TrueNAS where you also run Plex, then the Plex container does not use SMB to access the media.
You conly configure a bind volume for the container which points to your local media storage.

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Okay, assume your movies are stored on the TrueNAS in /mnt/media/movies

Plex is not accessing your media via SMB, but your Fire Cube is

You may create an smb share of //truenas/movies that shares /mnt/media/movies for your Fire Cube to access

…and also present /mnt/media/movies to your Plex container as /movies

TrueNAS does something called “hostpath validation” as a security measure, and will not let you use the same folder (/mnt/media/movies) as both an SMB share and a Host Path in app configuration

You could use different path, say ‘/mnt/media’ to share via SMB or present to your Plex app, or turn off Host Path Configuration ACL in the Plex app configuration pane in the TrueNAS web UI

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Just so I understand.
Do you mean to add both the SMB share (//nas/video) and the local path (/mnt/rust/video) in the configuration of the APP?
If yes, I dont understand why you would do that.

But if you mean that just creating an SMB share (//nas/video) for that path (/mnt/rust/video) creates an issue, then I am happy to tell you that this is not an issue in SCALE 24.10 RC2 :slight_smile:

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