QNAP TR-004 DAS RAID5 Nvidia Sheild Pro 2018 Plex bag of poop

[DAS Boy]

Hi people!

I have the above set up. Before I ventured into the world of DAS, I had an external WD elements 2TB usb 3 HDD that used to work fine until I decided to upgrade to the above.

The QNAP has a hardware raid controller so opted for the setup of RAID 5 which the Nvidia Sheild picks up no problem.

I have 4 x 6TB Seagate Barracuda ST4000DM004 giving me approx 16TB of space.

I duly set the Raid on Windows and copied my content on to the device. Tested opening the one of the movies from my dvd rips collection and played back absolutely fine.

Once set up on Nvidia with Plex, the libraries took a good day to scan through. Once it was all done it took an absolute age to show the libraries and basically runs so poorly its practically unusable.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I am considering removing RAID altogether. I have sufficient Backups using other methods.

Thanks in advance!

 

[next010]

Hi people!

I have the above set up. Before I ventured into the world of DAS, I had an external WD elements 2TB usb 3 HDD that used to work fine until I decided to upgrade to the above.

The QNAP has a hardware raid controller so opted for the setup of RAID 5 which the Nvidia Sheild picks up no problem.

I have 4 x 6TB Seagate Barracuda ST4000DM004 giving me approx 16TB of space.

I duly set the Raid on Windows and copied my content on to the device. Tested opening the one of the movies from my dvd rips collection and played back absolutely fine.

Once set up on Nvidia with Plex, the libraries took a good day to scan through. Once it was all done it took an absolute age to show the libraries and basically runs so poorly its practically unusable.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I am considering removing RAID altogether. I have sufficient Backups using other methods.

Thanks in advance!

Option 1
Dont use Plex media server on the QNAP, instead set up Plex server on the Shield which should run much better, this requires a wired ethernet connection.

Option 2
Try Jellyfin instead of Plex, Jellyfin is open source software unlike Plex server which is known to not run well on low end Arm, there is a QNAP version and for clients use Kodi with plugin or MrMC on the Shield.

 

[ajohnson30]

I think there's some confusion here.
You did say this is a TR-004 DAS, not NAS, so you wouldn't be running your Plex server on the QNAP. That should not be the issue.

You mentioned hardware raid - you're sure hardware raid is enabled and you didn't somehow end up using windows raid? According to what I read, the hardware raid is set via the dip switches. If you did it some other way then you're probably in software. You should not have had to "set the raid in windows" as you stated...

How is the DAS connected to the windows box? (USB 2, 3, 3.1, C?) USBC would be preferable.
Ideally you should try and do some sort of transfer rate test. The fact that movies play directly with no issue is a good sign.
Try another test with a movie that has the largest file size you can find (blu-ray/4k maybe?), just as another test.

 

[next010]

Oh yeah my mistake, misread that as QNAP NAS.

I've owned those QNAP DAS before they are unreliable on anything other than a QNAP NAS, I had complete array of disks turn raw with it connected to a windows PC.

Also QNAP use a custom system, that makes recovering data tricky should it fail on you. In my case it was a RAID mirror array that should have left me with one working drive but instead there is a custom mix of partitions underneath and it wasn't a simple clone of each drive.

As aj mentions there are DIP switches on the side it must be set to manual RAID mode.

The Shield only supports exFAT and NTFS I think, which did you format in ? try the other as a longshot.

If it comes to it you can use standalone drives, it wont make a differences to Plex were the data is stored.

 

[DAS Boy]

I think there's some confusion here.
You did say this is a TR-004 DAS, not NAS, so you wouldn't be running your Plex server on the QNAP. That should not be the issue.

You mentioned hardware raid - you're sure hardware raid is enabled and you didn't somehow end up using windows raid? According to what I read, the hardware raid is set via the dip switches. If you did it some other way then you're probably in software. You should not have had to "set the raid in windows" as you stated...

How is the DAS connected to the windows box? (USB 2, 3, 3.1, C?) USBC would be preferable.
Ideally you should try and do some sort of transfer rate test. The fact that movies play directly with no issue is a good sign.
Try another test with a movie that has the largest file size you can find (blu-ray/4k maybe?), just as another test.

Correct, all the content on a DAS unit. Yes, I set the dip switches to specifically set RAID 5 on the unit itself. I finished off creating the volume on Windows with Disk Management tool.

Transfer rate was around 80-100 mbps using USB 3.0 cable. I use the same connection on my Nvidia Sheild which will recognise and open the das as an external drive. I can play content fine using ES explorer on the NS.

The issue is more plex not loading my libraries once scanned of eventually does if I click about on plex but it's not brilliant. I have managed to get a movie to play fine too, the real issue is browsing the content like you would Netflix. Also dropouts where the media server crashes.

Thanks

 

[Sloppy Bob]

Once set up on Nvidia with Plex, the libraries took a good day to scan through.

I've just setup a new Shield. I use Kodi instead of Plex.

I have ~50TB of media on it. ~1200 movies and dozens of TV shows. It took about 4 hours to scan it all.

Try Kodi instead of Plex?

 

[DAS Boy]

I've just setup a new Shield. I use Kodi instead of Plex.

I have ~50TB of media on it. ~1200 movies and dozens of TV shows. It took about 4 hours to scan it all.

Try Kodi instead of Plex?

I bought a lifetime pass with Plex years ago and have always been happy with it until now obviously...

With Kodi, can you configure to access via the Internet? Remote view your content and play?

 

[next010]

I bought a lifetime pass with Plex years ago and have always been happy with it until now obviously...

With Kodi, can you configure to access via the Internet? Remote view your content and play?

It's not really designed for that, but it can be combined with media servers like Plex via the plex plugin go into addons in Kodi and search for Plex.

In this case Plex server is still running but the Plex client is no longer used, its worth a try at least to see if the problem is the server or client.

One other thing is did you move the Plex internal database to external storage, if not that might be worth checking.

 

[DAS Boy]

It's not really designed for that, but it can be combined with media servers like Plex via the plex plugin go into addons in Kodi and search for Plex.

In this case Plex server is still running but the Plex client is no longer used, its worth a try at least to see if the problem is the server or client.

One other thing is did you move the Plex internal database to external storage, if not that might be worth checking.

All on external drive

 

[dante01]

I've a QNAP TS-453A with 4 WD Red Plus 4TB drives in a RAID 5 Array. I have no issue what so ever with this configuration and use both the NAS's own media server and Serviio for DLNA PnP as well as running an SMB and AFP server from the NAS. I've 16GB of memory onboard the NAS.

I'd suggest the issues you have to be with PLEX as opposed to the NAS, its software or RAID.
PLEX is notoriously resource hungry and uses a lot of your memory and processing power.

I use a Zidoo Z1000 Pro media playing and access my media library on it using SMB. I can load PLEX onto this, but feel no need to.

I've had other NAS drives in the past and I've also had those configured with a RAID 5 Array. I've had drives fail and the RAID array has saved my bacon on several occassions. Even if you've you library backed up elsewhere, you'll still not be able to transfer it back onto your NAS as easilly as it is to recover a NAS configured in a RAID Array. All I had to do was remove the faulty drive and replace it with a new one. It is also far easier to increas the capavity of a RAID and you simply replace each drive in turn with a larger volume one at a time. There's also the fact that you do not have to trouble yourself with having to ensure the NAS is backed up and you don't have to have a second set of drives with which to do this with.

 

[ajohnson30]

OP has a DAS not a NAS...we covered that...

 

[DAS Boy]

All on external drive

So, I set up remote rebooting which sort of does the trick, I think the issue is Plex just simply crashing.

Thanks for all the suggestions.