So my setup for watching movies I have ripped currently is having them on mycloud personal which is connected to my network. I have a dedicated PC running windows 10 with the plex server that is on at all times. I have Kodi installed on amazon fire tv’s in my house with plexbmc. I have 2 questions.
Is there anyway to run the plex server straight from the mycloud personal? I know with some other mycoud nas’s there is sotware for them. If not is there any hack of anything to get it to work or any plan in the future?
If the above is no possible is there a way to make windows stay connected to the drive. After a day or so it will disconnect and will not reconnect until I go to the computer and click on the drive to reestablish a connection.
If you use the search feature at the top of the page you’d see there are a number of threads discussing Plex, with a recent thread being a few days ago were a similar question to yours was discussed. The bottom line is that Plex is NOT officially supported on the lower end My Cloud units. The problem lies with the lower end processor used on the entry level WD My Cloud units, it is simply not powerful enough to run Plex effectively. One may be able to install the Plex module to a WD My Cloud using version 3 firmware but it is not officially supported by Plex.
Plex is currently ONLY officially supported on the following WD My Cloud models:
My Cloud Mirror
My Cloud EX2
My Cloud EX4
My Cloud EX2100
My Cloud EX4100
My Cloud DL2100
My Cloud DL4100
See the following links for more information on NAS support in Plex:
As to your question about keeping the connection to the drive alive. There is probably a way to create a trigger, like with Windows built in Task Schedule, to run at a set time to tickle the drive and keep the connection alive for Plex. There is also this Microsoft article that explains how to change the time value for “drop idle connections” in Windows to keep a mapped network drive connection alive.
Plex on a WD would only be able to act as a DLNA software, theres no way it would be able to transcode any of your files - but the WD alreay has DLNA software built in (Twonky).
What is the need for Plex? Is it the only way the firetv can view your WD and its content? As im sure there must be another way to acess your content.
Transcoding is extremely useful but does require a decent processor, it effectively converts your media on the fly so that the firetv, iphone, roku etc that usually cant play certain media formats or containers .mkv etc, are able to play. If you really wanted plex on your WD to act as a DLNA then you’d need to find out what content the FireTV can play natively e.g .mp4 and convert your library to those files so that they can be played without transcoding.
Great. Thank you for your answers. I like plex one for the transcoding because it is flawless and two for the album art, info and other meta data it fetches from the internet about each item instead of just having a list of items to choose from. I research and try the tickle option metioned for windows to see if I can stop it from disconnecting after not used for a few days.
no need for Twonky, Plex or any other UPNP/DNLA services running without need. Also no need to run the PC if you already have a NAS.
Set Kodi to use network shares via SMB. In a few words, Kodi will see the network shares directly from the NAS (just like your PC). You will get all art work, all metadata, etc etc.
That is my current setup, AFTV/Kodi access all my media files directly from the NAS. Same goes for 3 tablets, 2 laptops, 3 phones.
