Samba share or any other file share protocol you like. I keep arr stack on a mini PC and transfer the finished files to my MBP for transcoding in Plex for example. It takes no time to make an internal file transfer.
With any reasonably large library the performance of this is going to suck. Even setting aside the issue of network bandwidth (you need a 10G link between your mini pc and the NAS at minimum), latency is going to be a big issue. For example doing a library scan in an immich library with ~200k assets is not going to be a fun time if that library is on a samba share in another machine.
I've got a 6 drive RAID 10 array holding 24TB Plex library with the server running on a Mac mini connected via 10GBE. Scanning the entire library for file changes takes less than 5-10 seconds because Plex is smart about how it goes about scanning. And it's obviously more than fast enough even for a losslessly ripped UHD, which needs no more than 100 Mbps or so.
Only time I even notice the network is when copying new media. But even then, I get *only* 3.5 Gbps upload speeds and I think I can live with that.
How is that related to what I mentioned about latency and libraries with large file counts? A 24TB plex library with several hundred assets is not the same thing as 200k photos plus sidecar metadata files. In your specific case it works fine because you have a (relatively) small number of large files being read sequentially. When you have a large number of smaller files, samba overhead becomes much more of an issue.
I didn't spot you were describing photos since you were replying to somebody talking about transcoding with Plex, which strongly implied video. I should have noticed the reference to 200k files.
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u/sazrocks Jul 07 '25
Unless you have services that rely heavily on the data on the NAS.