Questions about moving my Emby install and metadata to an SSD

[stealthboy 2]

Right now I am running Emby and Plex on my Synology NAS. However, in the near future I would like to move these services to an Intel NUC with an SSD. My understanding is that this is going to significantly increase performance, because I will have a proper CPU for transcoding and the load times should be much faster on an SSD instead of on an HDD like they are now. I have read many reports of people migrating Plex and its metadata to an SSD like this and noticing a lot of improvement, and I am hoping the same will be true of Emby. But moving Emby's metadata doesn't seem like an easy process, especially because right now I am saving artwork, .nfo, and thumbnails (.bif) to the media folders themselves. 

So, some questions:

1. Is there notable improvement from having my Emby metadata on an SSD as opposed to an HDD?

2. If the answer to the above is 'yes', what would be the best way to migrate the files? Or would it be better to just uncheck the option for saving to my media folders, and let everything get re-built from scratch onto the new SSD?

3. What are the pros/cons to saving metadata to the media folders instead of a central metadata/library location? I would honestly like to change over to the metadata/library option, because I dislike having all of those extra files in my media folders, but I would like to better understand the benefits and drawbacks of each option before I start messing with things.

Thank you. @cayars

[Carlo 4561]

Hi,

What you describe with having graphics, bifs, nfo (media specific) file in the media folder is perfectly fine and both what I do and what I recommend. If you ever need to reload in the future you want these items in the media folders associated with specific media.

Install Emby to the SSD so that the program files, databases, cache, metadata, transcode folders are on the SSD.  Media, need not be on SSD.
The metadata folders won't be used to hold cover art and specific movie/show graphics as those are stored with the media but will be used for other things like cast members (people) and all their pictures/graphics.

The cache folder is where the graphics are delivered from and this will be on SSD.  The graphics you have in metadata and cache could be any size (as downloaded) but the cache folder will have proper rendered sizes and special effects if using something like our CoverArt plugin. So the graphics in the media library are there to make sure they are always available with the media but the copies prepared to be delivered to the client app come from the cache folder on SSD!

Do you have Premier? If so, do you have the Configuration Backup Plugin installed? If not get it installed and configure it.

Your last question is hardest to answer. I'd say it depends on the size of your system. How many movies, TV Show Episodes do you have? How about the size of your Music Library? Any other libs of size not covered already?

Which NAS to you have at present?  It may have QuickSync, if it's a Celeron CPU and have "+" in the name such as Synology 920+
What NUC are you planning to get?  Have any basic specs, such as Memory, Drive(s), CPU?
What OS will you use?

I'm guessing you plan to install Emby on the NUC but keep the media stored on the NAS?  In that case everything could be migrated over but each library configuration would need to be changed to use the new location/network share.  Then after all library settings are changed you would need to run a library scan for the server to adjust these paths.

We'll be able to better advise you how to proceed with the above information.

Carlo

[rbjtech 5284]

My first question would be what Synology NAS do you have - as a much better option is to just put the SSD in the Synology

Dragging media over the network (especially high bitrate 4K content) is no way near as efficient as having the media 'local' - and thus 'may' introduce problems you did not have before (because your media was local, on the same synology).

So lets see if your synology can be upgraded - if not, then I would tread with caution - as moving to a NUC will speed up 'browsing' for sure - but it may introduce other playback issues..