Can you use these nas drives on your desktop to store movies to stream through plex?

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Short answer.. Yes.

Long Answer: Yes... but - these are 7000 rpm drives, which are fast in hard drive terms. If all you're doing is running this as a personal media server (not sharing it, not performing large backups to the drives at the same time etc) then you should be fine. Your limitation on this will more likely (if using something like Synology or QNap) be the processor and the ram since plex likes to do transcoding on its video files for compatibility.

I have historically used drives of this speed to play movies so I know it works... fundamentally if it will play off the drive to a media player, it will play off the drive to plex... but please note, I don't have up to date experience with things like RAW Blu-ray or 4k, which will be much larger than the Dual-Play downloads they used to provide alongside blurays/dvds about 5/10? years ago?

Even in the case of 4k and uncompressed Blu-ray, as long as your drive is either only used for plex or used in RAID with another drive, I would expect you to hit processor limitations quicker than you hit the drive read limits on this, because most home servers don't use high end processors... although id be curious to hear other peoples thoughts.

Side note: these drives and the WD red drives are both rated for Surveillance backups... AKA your security cameras if you have them. So I would use this as further proof they should be fine.

If not.. .consider WD Purple or Seagate Skyhawk.

Hope this helps.

ASIN	B084ZTSMWF
Best Sellers Rank	650 in Computers & Accessories ( See Top 100 in Computers & Accessories ) 1 in Internal Hard Drives
Box Contents	IronWolf HDD 12TB, The actual capacity may vary.
Brand Name	Seagate
Cache Memory Installed Size	256
Color	NAS HDD
Compatible Devices	Desktop
Customer Package Type	Standard Packaging
Customer Reviews	4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars (8,879)
Data Transfer Rate	6 Gigabits Per Second
Digital Storage Capacity	12 TB
Form Factor	3.5-inch
Global Trade Identification Number	03665155000090, 08719706018548
Hard Disk Description	Mechanical Hard Disk
Hard Disk Form Factor	3.5 Inches
Hard Disk Interface	Serial ATA
Hard Disk Rotational Speed	5400 RPM
Hard-Drive Size	12000 GB
Hardware Connectivity	SATA 6.0 Gb/s
Installation Type	Internal Hard Drive
Item Dimensions L x W x Thickness	37.3L x 25.9W x 6.6Th centimetres
Item Type Name	IronWolf Internal NAS Hard Drive
Item Weight	649 g
Manufacturer	Seagate
Manufacturer Part Number	ST12000VNZ008/N0008
Media Speed	210 megabytes_per_second
Model Name	ST12000VNZ008
Model Number	ST12000VNZ008
Network Connectivity Technology	SATA
Number of Items	1
Product Features	Data Recovery Service
Product Warranty	3 year manufacturer
Read Speed	180 Megabytes Per Second
Specific Uses For Product	Business
UPC	763649136348

Seagate 12TB IronWolf Internal NAS Hard Drive | SATA 6 Gb/s (ST12000VNZ008)

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