According to a recent post on NVIDIA’s community forum for its SHIELD device, the popular video server app PLEX is about to get a new update to allow the use of external storage devices. Of course, that will only apply to users of one of NVIDIA’s 16GB SHIELD devices. However, it will mean that those devices’ owners will be able to access and store their entire PLEX library without taking up any on-device storage at all. That’s a pretty substantial feature and, best of all, it’s already available to PLEX Client Beta users – not to be confused with the PLEX Server Beta. So anybody interested in trying the feature out early will want to look over the instructions below and get signed up.
Getting started is easy enough but does require users to apply for one of the beta slots. First and foremost, interested parties need to sign up for the abovementioned PLEX Client Beta. Clicking the first button below redirects to that page. Approved applicants will receive an email, notifying them of the approval. Having completed that step, users will also need to sign up for the beta of the PLEX app itself via Google Play. Although it can take some time, up to a few hours in some case, the update will then appear on the SHIELD DEVICE’s Google Play Store to install the beta. After the update is installed, users can connect their USB Storage or SD Card, that can optionally be “adopted” to the SHIELD device itself. Navigating to the PLEX in-app settings, then to PLEX Media Server, and then Storage Location will provide users with the option to select the newly connected storage medium.
It’s also worth mentioning, however, that there are three currently known issues with this beta. Those will almost certainly be fixed at some point moving forward but anybody interested in the beta will want to take note. The first is that a manual restart of the server may be required after storage has been migrated. It should restart automatically if it closer after migration but that’s not always the case. Next, the server might show an “unclaimed” status after migration but that should disappear relatively quickly. Finally, the PLEX Media Server will crash and become unavailable if the storage device is removed or unplugged. Anybody worried about those kinds of issues will probably want to hold out until the as-yet-unannounced stable release of this feature.