Plex + Rclone > Cache or not to Cache?

Help and Support
1

Hi All,

First post here after reading thread after thread to help me optimize rclone with my Plex setup I have a question that I hope can be cleared up, below is a brief overview of my setup.

My current setup is below

Hetzner Dedicated Server
Intel Xeon E3-1245
16 GB RAM
Windows Server 2019 (I'm a Windows guy!)

rclone v1.51.0

  • os/arch: windows/amd64
  • go version: go1.13.7

I have been using this server for a few years now and had no issues with using Plex able to have 10+ concurrent streams with no issues!

However after a drive failure I took the decision not to replace the drive and move the remainder of my media to GSuite and started using rclone, I know that most aspects of Rclone on Windows is experimental however Windows was the only OS I could initially get Intel Quick Sync to work on to assist with HW transcoding and I use Windows servers day in day out in my job!

I have a relatively small media library <10TB which I am in the process of moving to Gsuite. (700GB a day)

I have had rclone setup using the following mounting commands to cache and stream the media, the cache helped with plex scanning after the initial scan

`start c:\rclone\rclone.exe mount --allow-other --allow-non-empty --cache-db-path D:\Rclone\Cache\ --cache-chunk-path D:\Rclone\Cache\ --cache-chunk-total-size 250G --buffer-size 32M --use-mmap --dir-cache-time 72h --drive-chunk-size 16M  --timeout 1h  --vfs-cache-mode minimal --vfs-read-chunk-size 128M --vfs-read-chunk-size-limit 1G gcache: X:`

I decided to allow a cache of up to 250GB as without it plex media scans when moving items from attached drive to Gdrive would take hours as it would scan the whole library and this seemed to help!

I have since found out I can mount my gdrive and leave the cache out the equation, I gave this ago my mount command currently is

rclone.exe mount gdrive:/ X:

Everything seems speedy movies are loading fine and I am able to have multiple streams at the same time which is what me and my family need!

I performed a library scan of my TV shows <1TB and this finished in less than 60 seconds where as using cache it could have take up to 60 minutes!

Is using the non cached mount likely to get my API banned for 24 hours?

You can see my API spike when I performed the library scan a little over 5 requests a second I read somewhere that the limit is 2 requests a second is this correct? am I better off leaving the cache on in order to protect my account from the API ban?

spike

Thank you for taking the time to read and I appreciate this a noob question which I am when it comes to Rclone.

Regards,
Lee

2

hello and welcome to the forum,

--allow-other does nothing on windows.
--allow-non-empty, does nothing given your command.

you sure have a lot of flags.

when i mount, it is very simple,
rclone.exe mount remote: x: --read-only

i have never used the cache feature.
almost impossible to get into api trouble.

3

I've seen some people on the forum say that rclone cache is being deprecated. I'd be interested to see if that is the case, and whether the cache layer is needed anymore with the mount improvements.

4

funny, i has written that last post and i was going to mention that the cache is

  • not maintained
  • has known bugs that will never get fixed.
  • soon to be deprecated.

in all my years of using rclone mount, i never used cache or vfs flags.
well, sure, my first time, like all newbies, i had this flag and that flag and more flags, flags are fun and cool.
but now
rclone mount remote: x: --read-only

5

as i understand it from my experience and from @calisro, the cache layer is not needed, even on gdrive...

6

Cool, good to know. I may rewrite my mounts to remove the cache then.

Historically I was doing using the crypt, cache, and mount functions.

7

if you have used the cache and it works for you, go with it.
but if you like to tinker, then you can try to remove as many flags as possible.

i use crypt and mount.

8

Thank you for your reply good to hear that this should work fine!

Yes I guess you can say I got a little flag happy!

Regards,
Lee

9

as a doctor, this condition is called flagatosis. a common noob condition but the cure is painless. :upside_down_face:

10

me too,
i am in love with the free windows server 2019 hyper-v edition.
have you tried it.
i run a portable version on a usb key that i keep in my wallet.
and refs filesystem.

11

Yes! I always have a copy with me however most my work is within Azure so I have plenty of OS and boot disks at my finger tips!

1 Like
12

again, welcome to the forum.

13

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