File system for Plex

[Enquiries]

Love your video and I now have a Terramaster F8 SSD plus that I want to use 100% as a Plex media server. During set up it seems to default to BTRFS. I also read that this does not play well with RAID 5 or 6. Which file system should be used and which raid for a plex media server. I know NAS is not back up so have have copies of video files elsewhere. Just need to know which file system and RAID would be most reliable for a Plex only use.

Thanks soooo much

[ed]

Thanks for the message, and great choice with the TerraMaster F8 SSD Plus — it’s a very capable system for Plex.

For a Plex-only setup where you already have your media backed up elsewhere, the best combination is EXT4 with RAID 5. EXT4 is simpler and a bit faster than Btrfs, especially for large media files, and it avoids the extra overhead that Btrfs adds for snapshot and checksum features that you don’t really need for video playback.

Btrfs is excellent for general data protection, but for Plex it can add unnecessary complexity and slightly reduce performance. RAID 5 gives you one-drive redundancy and good read speeds for streaming. If uptime is more important than capacity, RAID 6 gives extra protection, but you lose a bit more usable space.

So, in short:
• File system: EXT4
• RAID type: RAID 5 (or RAID 6 if you want stronger redundancy)

That setup will be fast, stable, and ideal for Plex media access.