Preventing my PR4100 from becoming an expensive paper weight

My Cloud OS 5 My Cloud PR
1

Hi

I have moved away from hosting any container on this. Plex barely runs nowadays so I am going to limit the NAS to one mission : host the data and move all the computing to a Unix server where the NAS will be mount using nfs.

For people having a decent use out of their nas. I am curious : what is your set-up? What raid type do you use?

3

Personally, I found Plex useful for movies - - - too cumbersome for music

ALTHOUGH, like the MyPassport Wireless, I too find the “Age of Plex” has passed.
For TV watching; I find streaming more than adequate.
For “watching my own content”; I find that plugging a laptop into the TV and playing content using a generic media player more than adequate. (If I did this everyday, I would run a HDMI cable to my desk, or buy a dedicated media server laptop for the TV).

Honestly; this is what I now do with my music. I have done a number NAS media server options, with ROKU sticks, plex, DLNA, internet connections to home NAS etc.; and I found it all cumbersome to maintain and slightly flakey. I have now devolved with the super simple brute force solution:

  • Media library on a USB key; (which can travel with me and is used on multiple PC’s)
  • WMP for music server; (do I need more?)
  • USB driven DAC (this is the secret sauce)
  • DAC connected to home theater system via hardwire RCA jack.

The USB driven DAC and home theater are for higher quality music. Yes, I can play music to my desktop speakers. Yes, I can stream bluetooth to the home theater (from PC or phone). Yes, I have spotify on the computer.

As for Raid:
I have 2 bay NAS units. I use Raid 0 on these guys. Raid zero has it’s uses - - → and as Cerberus has a point that a Raid on a NAS is not a 100% effective backup system.
NAS units

  • are vulnerable to rogue software updates
  • are vulnerable to user error (OMG! I deleted my files!)
  • are vulnerable to external factors (OMG! Someone call the fire department!)

What a NAS does in general is: provides a file server repository (allows multiple users access to data); and is a great place to put ONE set of backups. You need more than one.

What Raid does do is protect you from the a common type of failure in the nas: Mechanical HDD failure. (but only if you maintain the unit; and be mindful of drive failure warning lights).
I like Raid Zero because I don’t have enough play money for 4 bay NAS units :wink:

4

I still have my PR4100 and Plex works fine. I’m able to stream from it to my Amazon firesitck Plex app. I also have the Plex App on my iOS devices. Works better than Netflix. I don’t pay for any streaming services as I torrent everything. I can use any of my iOS devices anywhere in the world as long as I have internet to stream since I have remote connection enabled. I still have over 12TB of storage available after since I bought it in 2018. Have you fully upgraded to the NAS memory to 16GB? Have you consistently updated the plex server? You need to do this from time to time as Plex adds new features. Here is the link. Manually updating Plex Media Server on MyCloud NAS - NAS & Devices - Plex Forum Still, I the NAS interface is terrible, OS5 is a joke. WD makes great drives, but they should not be in the NAS infrastructure business, that I agree. My next purchase will be a Synology NAS running WD drives. Also I’ve never had a drive failure after over 6 years running a RAID 5 configuration for a total of 24 TB. I do keep an extra 8TB drive and Power Supply on hand. Instead of a paperweight, get yourself a Synology NAS, keep this as a primary backup/mirror server.

5

Nowadays all devices are capable of decoding different types of video encoding, so Plex (transcoding) is no longer necessary, except if you want to save bandwith while accessing a movie remotly, for using within your LAN.
I have an older WDMyCloud Single bay gen2 and I use Infuse on my AppleTV device, Kodi on Chromecast w/GoogleTV or VLC…The NAS is merely a storage box, no need for it to decode anything.

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I’m curious what your user experience looks like. I use Plex because because they have apps for iOS. Plex is as or better than Netflix or Prime video video viewing experience. It also automatically assigns the correct metadata with rotten tomato ratings, actors with bios and filmography, trailers, extras and subtitle downloads. If there are any issues with the wrong metadata it can be easily corrected manually. I don’t understand how people say it’s outdated or useless. This is my home screen from the iPhone:

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Here is my main screen from the Plex app on Amazon fire stick.
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I paid for Plex Pass and I’ve had no problem with it. In the past I used the stupid Twonky server to stream from my PlayStation or to an app on my Firestick. It was clunky, no graphics, no metadata. Just line by line movie files. If you have something that works better let me know.

7

I found myself limited on a lot of things I wanted to test (wireguard vpn, some networking functionalities I couldn’t get working and the overall slowness of the nas). I got a second hand mini pc with quick synch on Debian. I put every containers in there, mounted the NAS as nfs. If I had to do it again, I would have built a proper server from scratch instead of buying that.

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It’s not that is useless, but rather outdated. Plex requieres processing power from your NAS…With a simple player you don’t need that. KODI as well as Infuse also connect to the internet to retrieve metadata and show it correctly, independently from your NAS. You can algo correct NFO files in KODI. I never felt comfortable with client-server mode, specially when you have to decode graphics subtitles. I only use EMBY on a Samsung TV because Tizen OS do not provide other support.