Your Plex server doesn't need 70TB: Why hoarding 4K remuxes is a massive storage trap

Published Sep 5, 2026, 3:30 PM EDT Patrick Campanale has been in the tech space for well over a decade, specializing in PC/gaming news and reviews, as well as maker-focused products to build small businesses. With a start in technology back in 2010 surrounding the Palm/webOS ecosystem, Patrick spent his formative years developing mobile applications as well as blogging for various publications, eventually leading to starting his own website in 2014. After running a technology blog for a few years, he stepped out of that role and into the world of high-end custom PC manufacturing and building, with a focus on YouTube video production and overclocking. Then, six years ago, Patrick joined the 9to5Toys team as an editor/writer/reviewer with over 14,000 articles being published there there, ranging from deals and roundups to in-depth reviews on the latest technology, video games, 3D printers, and more. In his free time, Patrick loves to create projects from wood using various robots and methods, including leveraging the technologies of CNCs and lasers. If Patrick isn't working on a computer or playing video games, he's likely in his 2-car garage workshop creating something unique. In addition to all this, Patrick is also a youth pastor at his local church where he feels God has called him to serve, and he loves every minute of it. I’ve been running a Plex server for a long time, which means I’ve made my fair share of amateur mistakes. Storage is probably one of the biggest things plaguing my Plex server, and I have definitely made all three of these mistakes at least once (if not multiple times). Using older, more inefficient containers or codecs H.265/HEVC is life When I first got into building my Plex library, H.264 was the gold standard. Everything was H.264. These days, there are much more efficient codecs out there that can still retain the same video quality but with a much smaller file size. While AV1 is the new gold standard in terms of retaining quality with the smallest file size, H.265 (HEVC) is the perfect sweet spot. It’s supported by most modern systems, and takes up around 50% less space than H.264 at the same quality. As an example, a 20GB H.264 Blu-ray rip would likely only take up between 8GB to 12GB at H.264 with negligible quality loss (if you can even notice any quality loss at all). Imagine if you have 100 movies in your library, that’s 1TB of storage space saved without degrading the quality of the movies at all. If you’re not sure where to start with converting your library, there are tools like Tdarr that can do it for you. I used Tdarr to convert my massive Plex library to H.265 and saved around 7TB of space. Of course, the best option is to re-rip all of your media as H.265 from the source instead of transcoding it, but that takes ages and a lot of manual labor—Tdarr (or other similar tools) are completely free and automated. Keeping movies or TV shows you haven’t watched in years And probably never will We’ve all been there—there’s a movie or TV series that you ripped years ago to your Plex library and watched one time, but never plan to watch again. That media is taking up precious space on your Plex server that could be used by something else entirely. There are automated tools out there, like Maintainerr, that can cull your library for you based on whether it meets a certain criteria or not. Running something like Maintainerr is a great way to keep your library neat and tidy without lifting a finger, but I don’t actually use it in my own Plex setup. Instead, what I do is just manually cull my library as needed. Whenever my Plex library starts to get too large, I just go through and look to see what I don’t actually care to watch anymore. Maybe there’s something I recently added to the library that I don’t actually plan to watch, or there could be something that’s been on there for years that I want to watch then delete. However you manage it, keeping movies or TV shows around that haven’t been watched in years is simply a waste of space if you’re running low on storage. Thinking you need every movie in 4K HDR Can you actually tell the difference between 1080p and 4K from your couch? At one point, I kept both a 4K and 1080p Plex library on my server. I did this to keep from having to transcode on the fly, as it was simply easier to have both 4K and 1080p copies of movies to watch. Eventually, I realized that I sit approximately 13 feet away from my mid-range TV, and I simply can’t tell a quality difference between a decent 1080p Blu-ray rip and a full-fat 4K Blu-ray remux. Once I realized this, I simply deleted almost all of the 4K content that I had in Plex, freeing up a pretty impressive amount of space. You see, full 4K remux rips can take up 100GB of storage or more per movie. That means only 10 movies would fit in 1TB of storage. So, my 72TB server could hold just 720 movies if there was nothing else on it. Not every 4K movie is that large, but I did have quite a few in the 90GB+ range, with several pushing well over 100GB. When I finally realized I didn’t need every movie in 4K HDR, my Plex server gained so much space. It’s entirely possible to have a quality 1080p movie fit within 1 to 2GB of storage space, with some of my full-length movies taking up 1% of the storage compared to their 4K HDR counterparts. Ugreen iDX 6011 Pro AI NAS Brand UGREEN CPU Intel Core Ultra 7 255H The Ugreen iDX 6011 Pro AI NAS is one of the most powerful NAS servers in the Ugreen lineup. With Intel's Core Ultra 7 255H 16-core processor and 64GB of LPDDR5/x RAM onboard, there's more than enough power to handle anything you can throw at this system. Add to that dual Thunderbolt 4 ports, dual 10GbE LAN ports, an OCuLink expansion port, and more, and you have a very solid network attached storage system. Growth doesn't always mean "buying more drives" At the end of the day, your Plex server will likely never stop needing more storage. Mine has grown quite a few times. When I first started, it was just 12TB, and now I have 44TB in use and 72TB total in my server (soon to be 80TB once my replacement 8TB drive comes in from warranty service). If you’re running low on storage space though, just know you don’t have to buy more hard drives—you can just use the tips above to free up room on your existing system to put off the purchase until prices start to come back down.