using an m.2 for plex transcoding

[Enquiries]

I have a F4-424 pro just for plex. I have 2 m.2 drives. I set both up as hyper cache. I want take one and use to help with transcoding. How do I that?

[ed]

So, to clarify: Plex itself doesn’t really benefit from a dedicated SSD or M.2 specifically “for transcoding.” Plex uses your CPU (and sometimes GPU if hardware transcoding is enabled) to handle the actual video processing, and it writes temporary transcoding files to a volume that you specify in the Plex settings.

What you can do, though, is point Plex to use one of your M.2 drives as the transcoding temp directory. Here’s how:
1. Log in to your Plex web interface.
2. Go to Settings > Server > Transcoder.
3. Look for the Transcoder temporary directory setting.
4. Enter the path to a folder on the M.2 drive you want to use. (On QNAP/TerraMaster/etc. you may need to figure out the mount point or create a folder on the M.2 drive first and give it permissions.)
5. Save and restart Plex.

This way, Plex will use that fast M.2 storage as a scratch space for transcoding jobs, which can help performance if you were previously using a slower HDD volume.

One note: you can leave the other M.2 as hyper cache if you want, but keep in mind that caching and Plex transcoding are totally separate functions — so feel free to repurpose one M.2 entirely if that suits you better.