I’m following up on my original post here (which I can’t believe was almost two years ago) asking whether the PR4100 would be appropriate as a long-term Plex server. I’ve almost maxed out my 8TB MyCloud Mirror, and I wanted to run through a few remaining questions before I make a purchase of a new and improved setup.
As it’s been two years since I started looking at this server model, I was wondering if there were other models from WD that one might recommend over the PR4100. In addition, is it expected/rumored/known that there will be an updated version, model, or completely new device in the near future that will be a better buy?
I’ve acquired two 8TB WD drives (Red WD80EFAX / WD80EFZX). I will likely get two more in order to fill the whole PR4100 at once rather than setting it up progressively. If I tape the third pin, are these good drives to house media for playback?
When I do set all four drives into the server, will it be possible to make a RAID setup where one drive mirrors another and I have two separate volumes? Is that just two separate RAID 1 setups?
And one question I didn’t get answered from last time, the drive also seems to have the capability for us to upgrade the RAM to 16GB. Would the extra RAM do anything for me running it as a Plex server (concurrent streams?) or is that largely for the enterprise applications?
Will I encounter any issues running both the MyCloud Mirror and the PR4100 on the same network?
I use my PR4100 as a Plex server and its excellent. Not sure about your RAID questions. But you can certainly run both boxen on the network, as long as they have different names.
Generally speaking I am very happy with the capability and performance of my PR4100. I primarily use the NAS to store data, particularly my movie collection, and to act as a Plex Media Server. The ability of the PR4100 to transcode on the fly reliably was a big reason for my purchase and it has worked without any noticeable problems in my Plex configuration with many different Plex Media Player apps. I do have to manually install PMS updates that I download from the Plex website onto the PR4100 as the WD app page/dashboard section shows an extremely outdated build as current. But updating is really simple so it’s all good. Specific responses below but I’m just a novice that probably knows just enough to be dangerous so take them with a grain of salt.
I don’t know about any new model but I just compared the current price listed on Amazon to what I paid for my PR4100 and Amazon has it at about a 10% discount from the price I paid about five months ago.
I have not had any problems with any of the WD drives that I have purchased and I have multiple WD NAS systems.
I don’t know all that much about the different RAID configurations but when I setup my PR4100 I received advice to use a RAID 5 setup and so far so good. The PR4100 can do what the dashboard calls volume virtualization and is potentially capable of other forms of creating additional volumes. I’d try searching for more information on the WD site or this forum regarding multiple volumes and google the different RAID setups to see if RAID 5 or another might be more appropriate for your purposes. Another thing to note is the PR4100 allows for drive encryption which is something I wanted considering the amount of data I am consolidating on this NAS.
I manually upgraded from the standard 4GB (I think) of RAM to a full 16GBs and I definitely think that was overkill for me as the most significant use of my PR4100 is as a Plex Media Server. I really haven’t used much of that memory usually maxing out under 20% utilization even while it’s really working. I purchased the extra RAM to future proof myself for a while but an upgrade to 8GB would likely more than suffice. It’s also really easy to install the upgraded memory as I recall.
I cannot imagine you experiencing any issues with two WD NAS on your local network. I was running three on my LAN without problems and was actually using the Remote Backup function to automatically keep a copy of the data from the two smaller NAS devices on the much larger PR4100. It was a little complicated to setup at first but it works pretty seamlessly once configured.
I’m looking at upgrading from my EX2 Ultra to the PR4100. My question is, does this still work well in 2023, and does it do 4K transcoding decently? The EX2 Ultra doesn’t really do transcoding at all, and i think I’m going to kill it as I’m almost always maxing out my available 1gig of ram. (not upgradable)
Makes sense.
Transcoding was beginning to drive NAS specs; which was detracting from the core functionality of a NAS: Being a great file server for multiple users.
Long ago; I figured the best path was to TRANSCODE MYSELF; and stream hi-res files at native resolution.
Interesting to hear that. What do you mean by they’re beginning to act accordingly.
I ended up cancelling my order of a PR4100 and got a Synology 1019+. So far, the support and app have lasted me longer than my MyCloud Mirror Gen 2 did. Somewhere along the firmware updates, it just too sluggish to use, and I migrated to the Synology server without repurposing the WD. Even concurrent streams have played back just fine.
I will note that most of my streaming is 1080p media. If it’s 4k you’re talking about, that’s probably a different game. But I haven’t wanted to invest the time, space, and (until recently) didn’t even have internet that would support streaming files of that size.
I barely remember writing my previous post… so it’s been plenty long enough to provide an update if anyone cares.
Since 2019, I have moved running Plex Media Server (PMS) off of my PR4100 onto an always running mac mini (Intel mini 2018) and years later back onto running the Plex Media Server directly on the PR4100. The data has always been stored on the PR4100.
Despite my concluding comments, I can’t really fault the PR4100 as a Plex Media Server. I was happy with the PMS running on the mac but all of the metadata was getting too large for the relatively small flash storage. I could not figure out how to transfer my database file to the PR4100 so basically had to set up the PMS on the PR4100 as brand new.
I was very concerned about how well the PR4100 would handle creating thumbnails and whether that would bog down the PMS or the PR4100 completely. I didn’t experience any prolonged issues so other than having to recreate playlists and collections and fixing metadata it wasn’t a huge problem. Though I can imagine your mileage may vary.
What has surprised me about the return to running the Plex server on the PR4100 is how much faster scanning libraries takes versus the mac mini. It is a substantial improvement. I’d love for someone to explain that one to me…
The only performance hit that I’ve taken was attempting to play some odd file on an Apple TV on my home network and the PR4100 couldn’t or wouldn’t try to transcode it. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been able to transcode on the mac mini either but I doubt it. It was only a single strange file so that could easily be fixed by running the file through Handbrake with the right profile.
If I had to do it all over again, I doubt that I would buy the PR4100. The experience of how ridiculously poorly WD handled the move from OS3 to OS5 will be difficult to ever forget. I can’t imagine I’d be able to justify the price difference between the PR4100 and any other similarly performant storage solution.
Well. . . .I worked through the OS3 to OS5 transition. That effort was basically the death-knell of the WD NAS brand. The SMR/CMR debacle also took a HUGE toll on the trust in WD in terms of hard drives.
In terms of the WD NAS boxes. . . .for the time. . .late 2010’s. . . the units were fine.
No regrets buying the various units I have.
Today - - in 2025 - - -the industry has moved on, and WD (both hardware and software) have not. In 2025, there are definitely better options. (for both HDDs and NAS boxes).
The PR4100 is still a solid choice, but newer WD models like the EX4100 may offer better features. There’s no official word on a new version yet. The WD Red drives you have are great for media, and taping the third pin is fine for Plex. You can create two RAID 1 arrays, each with a mirrored volume. Upgrading to 16GB RAM can help with concurrent streams, but it may not make a huge difference for basic media playback. Running both the MyCloud Mirror and PR4100 on the same network should work fine if your network has enough bandwidth.
