Plex keeps buffering on FreeNAS.

WooZ_Lv · March 22, 2020

Any movie on any device in any playback mode will buffer nonstop.

But that happens at random sometimes nothing sometimes every 5 seconds. And doesn't metter if I watch on Xbox or Chromcast and if it's direct play or transcode and if it's 1080p rip or 4k rip. And now tried on PC straight from network share without Plex and its also stuttering.

I'm noob at freenas and plex setup. Maybe there is some configuration that isn't optimal. What I'm searched haven't helped. That's why I'm starting to feel that is hardware issue.

Server specs

Intel I3 4150

8gb DDR3 non-ECC

3x 2tb HDD

Asus H(something) motherboard

Intel 1gbit NIC

Server is connected to router via cat5e (around 15m) cable.

I'm thinking upgrading server to AMD 2600 based system (mainly reason to get 3700x in my desktop ) and maybe moving to unraid but I don't know if it will help.

I use NAS only for storage and in home plex streaming.

Sorry for my language but English isn't my first language and sorry for bit ranting mood...

Las_Killar · March 24, 2020

It sound more like a software problem, otherwise you should suffer from a bad HDD.
But i would try to monitor the freenas CPU usage when the buffering is happening to see if the cpu spikes.
If no spike is occuring then try to monitor the lan connection to see if it dies entirely when its stopping before the buffering.

If you can't any anormallies in cpu or network usage, i would check the HDD's for fails or low read speeds.
If you then still can't find anything that should be out of the ordinary then i would either do a complete reinstallment of freenas or i would grab a usb with 4-8Gb and get unraid on that to see if the problem occurs with that.

The thought about going over to Unraid would make sense when you are new to freenas (i have used freenas for quite a while BUT still feels rather newbie to it still)
And the step from the i3 4150 to a Ryzen 5 2600 will grant you nearly 10k passmark points and a good thumb rule is that plex want around 2k passmark for transcoding a 1080P file.

My final thought can be that i thing you would benefit more from Unraid rather then freenas, it's easier to upgrade with more storage (as long as the parity disk is the largest disk) and it's easy to install plugins like the "community applications" than makes it's so easy to install plugins like Plex, Ombi, Deluge, Rutorrent and so on. It runs directly from the usb and as long as you grab the storage in the machine it is easy to just plug the usb and the drives in a new machine and then boom machine is either upgraded or downgraded (depending on what you want)

WooZ_Lv · March 28, 2020

On 3/24/2020 at 10:04 PM, Las_Killar said:

It sound more like a software problem, otherwise you should suffer from a bad HDD.
But i would try to monitor the freenas CPU usage when the buffering is happening to see if the cpu spikes.
If no spike is occuring then try to monitor the lan connection to see if it dies entirely when its stopping before the buffering.

If you can't any anormallies in cpu or network usage, i would check the HDD's for fails or low read speeds.
If you then still can't find anything that should be out of the ordinary then i would either do a complete reinstallment of freenas or i would grab a usb with 4-8Gb and get unraid on that to see if the problem occurs with that.

The thought about going over to Unraid would make sense when you are new to freenas (i have used freenas for quite a while BUT still feels rather newbie to it still)
And the step from the i3 4150 to a Ryzen 5 2600 will grant you nearly 10k passmark points and a good thumb rule is that plex want around 2k passmark for transcoding a 1080P file.

My final thought can be that i thing you would benefit more from Unraid rather then freenas, it's easier to upgrade with more storage (as long as the parity disk is the largest disk) and it's easy to install plugins like the "community applications" than makes it's so easy to install plugins like Plex, Ombi, Deluge, Rutorrent and so on. It runs directly from the usb and as long as you grab the storage in the machine it is easy to just plug the usb and the drives in a new machine and then boom machine is either upgraded or downgraded (depending on what you want)

Yeah, it looked more like a software problem than anything else.

Switched to Unraid and now I don't have problems, but getting Plex to work was fun times, but that's just my luck because I always have weird problems.
One thing that I noticed was that Plex on the FreeNAS was mostly direct playing, but now with Unraid its mostly transcoding.

FreeNAS is for people who is more advanced in configuring and for those who just need plain NAS.

And now seeing what Unraid offers I'm glad that I finally went with Unraid.
Now I just need bigger cache drive and couple new HDD and maybe 10Gbit just because