Hey! I've been there, and honestly, the jump to a full-SSD setup for media is a total game-changer. I've been managing a 60TB+ server for about eight years now, and I've tried almost every configuration under teh sun.

For your situation, I would suggest going with the Samsung 870 QVO 8TB SATA III 2.5-inch Internal SSD for the bulk of your Plex library. I know people freak out about QLC NAND, but here is the thing: media libraries are "write once, read many" workloads. Once your 4K remuxes are on there, they just sit there and get read. I've been running three of those 8TB units for over three years now with heavy daily use and they're still at 98% health. No complaints at all.

That said, if you're doing heavy RAW photo editing, you definitely don't want your active project files on a QLC drive. The cache will fill up during a big batch export and speeds will tank to slower-than-HDD levels. It's super frustrating. My advice? Use a Samsung 870 EVO 4TB SATA III 2.5-inch Internal SSD if you want the reliability of TLC for your photos, or better yet, grab a Crucial P5 Plus 2TB PCIe Gen4 3D NAND NVMe M.2 SSD as a dedicated "work" drive and keep the big 8TB SATA for the long-term storage. NVMe is overkill for just streaming movies, but for scrubbing through 4K timelines or RAW files, you'll really appreciate the extra snappiness.

Hope this helps! Good luck with the upgrade.

Honestly, for a media server that sees a lot of action, I'd suggest skipping the QLC drives and looking at the Teamgroup T-Force Vulcan Z 4TB SATA III SSD. It uses TLC NAND, which is much more reliable for those heavy RAW photo edits, and it's surprisingly budget-friendly!

Seconding the recommendation above regarding the jump to SSDs! Honestly, it's night and day for scrubbing 4K. But I'd be careful with QLC for a main library if you're doing heavy batch editing. I've seen them crawl once that cache fills up... it's not pretty.

If you want reliability without the NVMe price tag, I'd suggest looking at the Western Digital 4TB WD Red SA500 NAS SATA SSD. It's built for 24/7 environments and has better endurance than the QVO. Another solid, conservative bet is the Crucial MX500 4TB 3D NAND SATA SSD. I've run those for years without a single hiccup. Just my two cents, but I'd prioritize endurance over raw NVMe speed for a media server!

Tbh, I'm totally with the last poster about ditching QLC if your doing batch RAW editing. The IOPS drop-off once the SLC cache is exhausted on QLC drives is brutal for high-queue depth operations. From a market standpoint, we're seeing a shift where enterprise-grade SATA is actually becoming a sleeper hit for media servers because of the higher TBW (Total Bytes Written) ratings and consistent latency. Here are two options that hit that 4TB-8TB sweet spot that haven't been mentioned yet: 1. Kingston DC600M Enterprise SSD
- Pros: This is basically built for mixed-use workloads. You get hardware-based Power Loss Protection (PLP) via tantalum capacitors, which is huge for data integrity during a power blip, and way better sustained write speeds than consumer drives.
- Cons: More expensive per GB and youre limited by the SATA III interface. 2. Corsair MP600 Core XT
- Pros: Great entry point for high-capacity NVMe. It uses a Phison E21T controller which is super efficient and doesnt thermal throttle as fast as the high-end Gen4 components.
- Cons: High-density NAND means it's still gonna slow down during massive 1TB+ transfers. Basically, if its strictly for Plex, SATA is fine. But for the editing side? Youll reallyyy appreciate the higher random 4K read/write performance.