Can FreeNAS work with just 1 HDD for Plex Server only?

[jseong309]

I currently have a separate NAS for my Personal files. But Curious if I can install a separate computer with FreeNAS 9.10 or 11 just for Plex with only one hard drive?

All my media and files are in a separate NAS so I dont really care about protection or bad sectors. Just curious if there are any negatives besides the protection and redundancy factor.

 

[ArgaWoW]

Sure why not. You can create a single pool.

 

[melloa]

I'd go with another solution. Linux comes to mind.

 

[wblock]

The nice thing about ZFS is that it tells you when files are corrupt.

 

[Spearfoot]

I currently have a separate NAS for my Personal files. But Curious if I can install a separate computer with FreeNAS 9.10 or 11 just for Plex with only one hard drive?

All my media and files are in a separate NAS so I dont really care about protection or bad sectors. Just curious if there are any negatives besides the protection and redundancy factor.

FreeNAS is a NAS appliance. In order to run Plex, you would have to install it in a Jail or in bhyve (on the newer version of FreeNAS). This is just an added level of complexity that you don't need, especially since you won't be using any of the FreeNAS features that are its primary reason for existing, e.g., redundancy.

As @melloa suggested, you'll be much better off using Linux. Just install Linux, install and configure Plex, and you're done.

 

[jseong309]

@melloa @Spearfoot

I just saw some posts on youtoob that FreeNas is slightly better at trans-coding multiple videos simultaneously. And to be honest installing/updating Plex on FreeNas is so much easier(less steps) compared to Linux.

Thanks for the input, I guess ill try out both to see which one would fit better for me.

 

[melloa]

@jseong309, it is your choice to run FreeNAS with one HD, but why build a server that would be good for ZFS with one HD and not use all its has to offer?

I'm from another school of thought, the one that uses FreeNAS to safe guard my data, with multiple drives, redundancy, two servers in sync, etc. Applications on VMs running on esx(i), one of them Plex on CentOS. So when you say:

And to be honest installing/updating Plex on FreeNas is so much easier(less steps) compared to Linux.

Kind of sound interesting, as to upgrade Plex it takes one line: yum -y localupdate plexmediaserver-1.7.3.3937-70f781325.x86_64.rpm (my last update). FreeNAS Plex plugin, if I remember, only click upgrade on the GUI, so easier? Yes.

 

[jseong309]

@melloa , I know where your coming from. I already have a FreeNAS that is setup the way it is intended. But using it for file server and Plex it caused buffering issues when I had more than 3/4 people on it. So I built another PC specifically for Plex server only to alleviate the buffering issues. So basically I have a copy of my media files on my FreeNAS server and my Plex server. So if my Plex server HDD crashes I still have my files on my FreeNAS.

Currently, I'm testing Windows 2016 as the stand alone Plex Server. With 3 people on at the same time it still buffers occasionally. So still looking for an OS that can handle 3-4 people without buffering issues.
Never tried CentOS so I'll give that a go, then FreeNAS.

 

[melloa]

Never tried CentOS so I'll give that a go, then FreeNas.

@jseong309, mentioned CentOS as is the one I'm running most applications on. I do run Plex on a VM but only can have three b-ray quality streams going on at the same time. It is CentOS issue? No. It is my esx(i), network, etc.

I do believe running from the same box where the media is hosted should give a better performance (i.e. your case, users running Plex on FreeNAS, etc).

I understand your points.

Good testing :)

 

[chrisada]

I just saw some posts on youtoob that FreeNas is slightly better at trans-coding multiple videos simultaneously.

I bet you saw that from Byte my Bits on YouTube. I won't read too much into those videos.

For just Plex Media Server and nothing else, you will get good results by going with light and stable OS that has good support for multithreading.

FreeNAS could serve you well, but same goes for Ubuntu or Mint. Go with what you're most comfortable using.

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

 

[danb35]

To the OP's question, yes, of course you can run FreeNAS with just a single data disk. As @wblock says, even if you don't have any redundancy that way, it will still know if you have data corruption so you can re-rip/re-download the movie. And yes, installing Plex on that is pretty much point-and-click. Of course, you have the "mount storage to jail" issue (which is far from intractable, but is an additional complication). But the point I haven't seen raised is that there are a few features missing from the FreeBSD version of Plex that are present in the Linux version.