How to build a portable Plex/NAS server and populate it with my old DVDs

[nolaguy]

Hi Ya'll. I am a newbie to both this site and to A/V work. In fact, prior to this I have only been an avid consumer of media. I have for a while now been contemplating a delima. I have an extensive collection of DVDs (500+) and am planning to downsize to an RV for full time travel upon retirement. Space is precious in an RV and I can not take the collection with me in its current format. I do not want to lose my DVD collection so I started thinking of building a small server on which to load my collection and then share to my TVs (one main and one bedroom) via PLEX. I might occasionally also use this to share via WiFi to a PC or tablet for outside viewing and would also like to use this for my music files as well. Unfortunately the more research and reading I do on the subject the more confused I've become. So here is my questions for you.

1) With size and energy usage being a challenge what is better, A pre-built NAS, compatible with PLEX, such as a Synology or Qnap or to build a system using a supermico server chassis or mini-tower PC?

2) What are the best A/V formats to use to get the best quality while limiting each of the movie file sizes to around 8Gb or smaller? On other sites the general consensus seems to be MP4/x-264 and AGC but most of my music was previously ripped to MP3 or WAV.

3) To achieve this using my PC (w/ Win7 pro)what software would you recommend for easiest and quickest approach to accomplish this.

I should note that I do not plan to share this system over the internet and would likely turn it on when in use and off when not to minimize power power consumption. This does not need to be 12V DC as I have a sizable pure sine inverter producing 120 AC. In this way it is probably very different than the usual applications of this group. Also, my so has a large video collection on Plex that I currently share with him. When I go on the road my plan is to occasionally log onto his server to download files I do not have. I may also ask him to occasionally download files to a SATA HHD to send to me. In this instance a NAS with hot-swap capabilities would be a plus.

I look forward to hearing your suggestions and sage advice.

[jagabo]

Almost all your DVDs are less than 8 GB to start with. Just use MakeMKV to remux the DVDs to MKV files. That will be exactly the same quality as the DVDs.

[lingyi]

LOL...Jagabo beat me to it! I can't speak to a NAS since I don't use one, but DVD-9's are max ~8gb , so no need to compress them. If you rip the movie only, you'll save a bit of space. If you want to save them as .iso (to keep the menus), DVDFab is highly recommend here. If you want the movie only, you can use MakeMKV which is free.

I highly recommend setting up multiple DVD drives for the process. I had to re-rip ~600 DVDs a number of years ago and had three drives going at once, one internal and two full size drives with SATA to USB adapters. You could use external slim drives, but reports are they aren't as reliable. Using this setup it took ~10-15 minutes per DVD and by staggering the start time, I was able to keep the process going almost continuously, only allowing time to rename and move the ripped .iso. It took me several months to complete the process and the time would have been 2-3X or more if I was compressing the files.

[lingyi]

I can't emphasize backups enough, but it's especially crucial since you'll be on the road away from your discs. Note that RAID in any form is not a reliable backup solution. Keep a duplicate set of hard drives with you or and ideally a duplicate set at home home so you don't have to spend time re-ripping the discs again. The reason I had to re-rip my discs wasn't because I didn't have a backup, but because I accidentally / foolishly deleted my original and backup drives during a transfer to a larger disk.

There are those who disagree with me, but I'm a firm believer in using the largest HDDs possible. Yes, 8tb+ is a lot to lose at once, but my theory is, the fewer drives, the fewer failures. My collection is stored on primarily a mix of 8tb & 10tb drives and I'll migrate to larger drives as they come down in cost. And yes, I have at least one backup of every HDD.

Which brings us to cost. I've said this (too) many times before, but the true bargain is currently external 8tb HDDs by WD or Seagate, coming in <$160 in the U.S with a cost of $20/tb vs. ~$30/tb for any other size drive. If you're willing to risk voiding the warranty, you can remove these from the external case and get the identical drive being sold as an internal for ~$240. You can also keep them in the case and use them as backups since they won't in frequent use.