@@Maraksot78 Some users on the Plex forums report that if you have Premium (which I do) it will always ping for authorization no matter the "allowed without auth" settings. I reset Plex on the WP and created a second basic account, which worked the one time. After that, the server couldn't be found unless connected to the internet. If I figure it out I will post here.
Hmmm... that is interesting... and a bit frustrating. I don't have a Plex Pass or Premium or whatever it's called, I just have a free basic account and it works fine for me. I hope you find a solution. I'm very interested to know what exactly is going on there and what can be done to fix it. Best of luck to you Mark.
@@markbowen9084 Ok, I've been messing around with my Wireless Pro since you brought this up. I turned mine on and was able to use Plex just fine. I then checked to see if it's connection to the internet (my home network) was on and it was so I turned it off. At that point I wasn't able to access Plex any more. The app on my phone told me the server was offline even though my phone was connected to the wireless pro directly and not to my home network. I then rebooted the Wireless pro while leaving it's connection to the internet turned off. Once it had rebooted it worked fine. I was able to open the Plex app on my phone and access all my content on the wireless pro just as if I had been connected to a server connected to the web. Hopefully this will work for you too. Cheers. :)
@@Maraksot78 OK, we are getting somewhere! Those were the same symptoms I had after it seemed to work the one time. My phone was connected directly to WP but the Plex server was showing offline. I tried your method of rebooting the WP Pro with the wifi already turned off and at first that seemed to fix the problem BUT the server eventually went offline again. After some fiddling around I've determined that everything works as long as I ALSO turn off the data connection on my phone! I've tried with my Premium and secondary Plex accounts and the behavior is exactly the same: data on, Plex server offline; data off, Plex server online. Do you happen to know if your phone was on a data network when it worked for you? I'm thinking that for the "allowed without auth" settings to work both the client and server must have no internet access. I can live with that as workaround for now but I'm trying to use this as a music server setup with Android Auto, and without data it's kind of... lame. :)
Thanks bro. My wife, 3 kids, and I take a yearly trip 2 full days of driving. I am looking forward to using one of these for the trip. I just wanted to hear a real person say real things about it. 👍👍
Just what I needed to get My Passport running in stand-alone mode. Thank you for the hard work you put into this looking up all the details to make it work.
Man, thanks for this. Exactly the questions I wanted answered. I’m about to start a cruise ship job. Limited internet for 6 months and no access to my primary Plex server. Time to start encoding for smaller file sizes I guess.
Nice video Brian, that's a handy thing to have! When I was still in the military, I created something similar because I wanted a streaming service/device when I deployed. Certain locations wouldn't let you bring any hard drives so I wound up using Subsonic instead of Plex. It's a media server that can stream all my media to any device with an internet connection. It can also stream w/out an internet connection, but it works by creating user accounts that can be logged into from anywhere and I still use it.
Nice! I've never heard of Subsonic. Sounds similar to the way Plex works. I'm not familiar with many other media serving apps. I'll have to look into subsonic and see what it's like. I wanted to use Plex for this to make it easier for my kids to navigate. Their interface is more Netflix-ish which is what my kids are used to. The MyCloud app is just navigating your typical file tree.
Nice think i will be getting this for the long journeys in the car with our son as he has my hand me down iPad mini this will make sense for me. thanks for the great video subscribed
Just FYI it can be a little quirky when using PLEX. Make sure any devices you're going to be using with it while on the road have all been 'paired' while you're home connected to the internet before you head on a trip. What I mean by paired it is seems Plex needs to associate the device with your account before it will allow it to stream content from your server even when you're offline connecting directly to it. I learned this recently the hard way. My wife tried to connect her iPad while on a road trip and even though I have her iPad associated with our Plex Account for our home NAS server I couldn't access the Wireless Pro via Plex because I'd never logged into it while connected to the internet. You can connect to it via the WD app and stream that way no problem but when using Plex you've got to jump through a few hoops. And of course if you have more than one Plex Server (which I do, my home NAS and then the Wireless Pro) you'll need to make sure your clients are connected to the Wireless Pro Server in the Plex app. But if you're familiar with Plex then I assume you already know this. Anwyway, thanks for checking out the video and Cheers! :)
Wanna skip to a particular portion of the video? Use the Time Stamps. :) -- Time Stamps -- 0:00 - video Intro 0:41 - why I bought the WD My Passport Wireless Pro 2:40 - setting up PLEX on the Wireless Pro 4:15 - adding a Library to your PLEX server 5:24 - Create a Digital Backup Copy of Your DVD & Blu ray Movies - MakeMKV & HandBrake 5:43 - My Passport Wireless Pro not powerful enough to transcode 6:10 - how to best organize files for PLEX 6:50 - adding a Library to your PLEX server continued 8:08 - how to get PLEX to work when not connected to the internet 9:38 - battery life while running 2 simultaneous streams 10:18 - how many simultaneous streams does the Wireless Pro support? 10:36 - while using the PLEX app? 11:19 - while using the WD MyCloud app 12:10 - video conclusion/final thoughts 12:40 - Thanks for Watching! Like, Share, Comment & Subscribe! :)
You're welcome. Thanks for checking out the video. I have also had trouble getting devices to connect to the Wireless Pro via Plex for the first time when not connected to the internet. I've found I have to connect the device first at home with internet and then it connects fine later without internet.
looking for something like this, but with an HDMI port, for a small tv, plug in and get plex. This is for a few ambulance for long trips for patients transfers. Thanks
That’s actually really cool, I came from your Corsair void pro review and decided to check out your channel. You definitely deserve more subscribers and views
Thank you very much. That's very kind of you. Happy to hear you enjoyed the video. Thanks for watching and for leaving a comment it helps out more than you know. Cheers! :)
Will this work on my new ipad pro? Can I connect it (via the same network) to my ipad and watch videos from my external hard drive, through flex, on my ipad?
Great tutorial. I got it working last year. Then I had to reset the drive for a couple reasons. I'm doing so, I had to re-add the fils to the drive. Once done, restored Plex, added library. After scan, it brings all the files in. But, on certain files I access from plex player, it says "Unavailable". Plex can't access or find the file. It's not all, only some. I didn't move directories or anything and the files are there in the path listed in Plex. Format of the file is the exact same as others h264/aac. Reset and established Plex again; same issue. Went down the Google rabbit hole to no avail. Any ideas?
Have you ever played around with doing something like a Roku stick that can plug directly into the vans video inputs? I want to use the vans screen rather than individual devices but obviously my older van cannot connect to a wireless player.
Need help, great video, followed your steps, but not quite sure how to sign into plex once connect to wifi on passport, on my phone I have the plex app, app asks me to sign in my plex, which I have but still nothing
are there any like this that are not running on battery , i would like to leave something at home and run off of wifi or cell service, and still have lots of storage,
Question....Can I just get an external hard drive for home use and keep it plugged into my Desktop PC? I need extra space for all my movies and TV shows I'm ripping. Thanks!
Once you delete any content from the folders on the WD, does Plex server no longer allow you to stream the deleted files? Also, wondering if you can make a removable SD the source folder for Plex Server to use if you're using the WD My wireless Pro (since it has a SD slot and all)?
I recently got this drive, but I got a few problems. My mac and iPhone can not connected to the WIFI in this drive(Windows works fine), sometimes the iphone works, but the mac just doesn't works, and the system says the wifi does not have IP address, but it surely has. How I can I solve this problem? And How can I stream videos to multiple devices? Because I found that once one device connected to the drive, my other devices just can not connect to it.
Hey thanks for the video! I got the wireless pro for a portable media streaming option. I got it connected at home with no problem and followed the steps you mentioned. I’m new to Plex so I may have messed up, but it gave me an error through Plex when trying to pull it up offline on our trip. On the Plex screen it keeps saying the server is not claimed. I claimed it once connected to the internet at our hotel but it popped right back up when not connected to the internet again. Any thoughts or suggestions?
Does the device you're connecting to it with have mobile data enabled? There was another guy that was having a similar problem and we found if he turned the mobile data on his phone off then it would work. Also I've found that any device that is connecting to the Wireless Pro via Plex needs to first be connected to it while you have the wireless pro connected to the internet. I tried connecting my wife's phone once while we were out on the road and it wouldn't work until we got to a place where we could connect the wireless pro to wifi. I believe what's happening is you need to authorize your device with your Plex account online first and then it will work offline later.
Hi Brian, Thank you so much for this video. Last year I made the plunge and bought a second had Wireless Pro (because I missed the boat for a new one!). On our 3 day road trip to the Grand Canyon this was a life saver! I even used it as recently as March this year on a 5 hour road trip. Just this week however, it has stopped working!! devices that previously worked fine now say the server is offline. I've tried connecting to the Wireless Pro while it is connected to the internet through my home WiFi (something it seemed I had to do the first time I connected a new device), and all devices work but as soon as I disconnect from the internet the server not online error pops up. Have you encountered this issue? All my devices are Apple (phone and ipad). Perhaps a software update prevents this from working now... I appreciate any thoughts or input as it keeps my kids and wife (who hates tech and doing anything to manage it for kids) much happier when this is working. Thanks so much!
To be honest my family and I haven't used this drive with Plex in a year or two. We have experienced the issue where the Plex app on our devices won't connect to it, but I found if I connected our devices to it while we were home and connected to WiFi right before leaving on a trip they would then connect fine during the drive. But once again it has been a couple years since I've messed with it because my kids are now old enough to read and navigate a file tree so we've just been using the VLC media player app which allows them to browse the files on the drive and then stream them wirelessly without having to use Plex. It works WAAAAYYYY more effortlessly but of course it doesn't give you the nice looking user interface with all the movie jackets and stuff like Plex does.
Another thing I don't quite understand, maybe someone can explain it to me, when you attempt to sign into to plex on the wd passport, how does the app know what Ip to look for?
Hi Brain. I have been trying to get plex on wdmpwp and is there suppose to be an icon on the server? I can't get plex to download to the WDmpwp. I'm using it with my Macbook pro. Can you please help me. Thanks
@@Maraksot78 Yes, but it doesn't look like plex was downloaded to the WD. I have had done several system restores. I do have my Seagate, where I keep my plex folder on, connected to my laptop. Did a self diagnostic and it is fine. Also when I unplug it form the outlet and then plug it back in I loose my home wifi connection and have to use the My Passport wifi. I'm getting frustrated with this. I have been trying to get Plex to work for over a week now and nothing. i will keep trying. Now I can't even get my Plex folder to move to the WD. I don't know what I'm doing wrong.
@@LynnDippel I'm very sorry to hear this. That sounds very frustrating. This sounds like one of those problems that would be much easier to address if I could physically be there. Of course that's not really possible so I will attempt to help the best I can. I would suggest seeing if there is a firmware update available for your MyPassport Wireless Pro. You should be able to do that through the Wireless Pro's dashboard under the firmware tab. Perhaps your unit needs to be updated?
@@Maraksot78 I did a firmware update and it was current. The problem might be is that I have lousy internet connection. Wifi on, wifi off. I will be calling them on Monday. I will let you know happens. Thanks for your help for now.
@@LynnDippel I also had a problem with the wifi on my Wireless Pro and found if the password for your home network has any special characters in it (i.e. & % $ # @ ! *) you will have problems with the Wireless Pro connecting to your network as well as other connectivity problems. The first time I set it up it worked but after that things went all haywire. I did a factory reset multiple times and every time after the reset I would get things set back up again and it would seem to be working fine but the next time I turned it on nothing would work. At that point I was ready to return my Wireless Pro. I talk about this in my Wireless Pro review video but don't say anything about it in this one. Anyway, I decided to try to find a solution one more time before returning it and I found some info on WD's website saying the Wireless Pro does not support network passwords with special characters in them. It only supports alpha-numeric characters. I had an ampersand (&) in my home network name and password so I changed them both (not sure I needed to change the network name but I decided to change both just for good measure) so I only had letters and numbers in it and after that all the problems I was having were gone! Since then it's been smooth sailing. Not sure if this is what you're experiencing but when you mentioned you were having problems with the wi-fi it reminded me of this.
Hi there I’m actually having problems with my passport wireless pro the problem is when I start using it after 2 minutes it’s crushing and all the lights blinking so I can’t download anything i have to turn it off and turn it on again and start over I don’t know what’s wrong with it I don’t know what to do could you please help me with this problem thank you so much
good job Brian. I just wanna replace my PLEX media server desktop with a 24/7 wireless external hdd. For now i'm using handbrake to convert the movies and hardprint the subtitles to .mp4 cointaners, also using the 'Optimize' plex solution, since my desktop is entry-lvl. Is this gonna work? Running the optimized .mp4 from WD MyP Wless Pro and not having to turn on my desktop. Will have the external hard-drive not in sight. Thanks for your time!
Personally I wouldn't recommend this for a home Plex Media Server. I would recommend getting a NAS that connects to your router like a My Cloud Mirror or something instead. That's what I have and use as a Plex Server in our home is a My Cloud Mirror. The downside however to using a NAS like the My Cloud or this My Passport Wireless Pro is the CPU in them isn't powerful enough to do any transcoding so if your client can't stream the video in it's native format/quality level then you won't be able to watch it from one of these devices. Using the Wireless Pro as a Plex server I only really recommend for road trips and stuff TBH.
@@Maraksot78 Thanks for the quick reply. Indeed, if you keep charging after reaching 100%, i've read that there are thermal issues on Wireless Pro. I'll give My Cloud Mirror a look :) Thanks again
Thanks for good review! I record 4K, MP4 movie, 30P at 100Mbsp. Will the WD My Passport Wireless Pro play 4K? If yes, what is the best way to do it? if no, what is work around. Thanks for help in advance
Thanks for checking out the video and for the question. Unfortunately the Wireless Pro isn't quite powerful enough to wirelessly stream 4K video as far as I know. From what I've read it tops out at about 8Mbps for 1080p streams. You can of course plug the wireless pro into a computer with USB 3 and view 4K content you have saved on the wireless pro but when it comes to wireless streaming I don't believe the wireless pro is powerful enough.
@@Maraksot78 Thanks for the quick answer. I will consider an NAS for 4K streaming and regular USB-3 portable HD to field backup my 4K video from SD card. As a test, I have connect the Lexar SD card reader with SD card to USB-3 of my $200 iWork10 Pro Tablet, and Toshiba USB-3 drive to iWork10 Pro USB-2 port, located on removable keyboard. It took 70 sec to transfer 800MB MP4 movie file to USB HD. Again, thanks for help. You have a talent to explain complicated thinks!
Hello, how do I upload videos from my hard drive to the plex media server. Do I need to connect it directly via USB in order to transfer my collection to the Wireless Pro? Thanks for your help.
So you're wanting to know what's the best way to transfer your media from your computer to the Wireless Pro? You can do it either via Wi-Fi or by using the USB cable. I prefer the USB cable as it is simple and fast.
I would assume so. Seeing as it's designed to be portable and turned on and off from time to time I don't know how 24/7 use will affect it however. There are other Home NAS solutions you can connect to your router that I feel would be a better option if you're wanting a 24/7 NAS/media server. I use the WD MyCloud Mirror but they do have other less expensive NAS devices as well that also support Plex.
it wants me to download the Server app on my computer, I can't fit my entire library on my computer and docent that defeat the purpose of the HD? You skipped a big part in this video. How to tell Plex that the HD is the server not the computer that I'm doing this one....HELP!
at 2:40 I show how to set up Plex on the Wiress Pro. You need to log into the My Passport Wireless Pro's dashboard from your web browser. I was assuming you would have already set up your wireless pro and were already familiar with how to log into the dashboard. Here's a link to WD's support page that should help. support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=13879
I am getting my butt kicked here... I am able to take my iTunes videos convert them to a MP4 seamless but they play really choppy over the wireless drive. I did try using the handbreak to convert those files to a smaller version which does work but what a pain. do you know what video format I should use to help with the direct convert process? currently i have about 850 videos... 4 kids and a wife that do alot of streaming, this looks to be a awesome tool just need to get the data setup correctly.
I actually just made a new video showing how to rip DVD and Blu-Ray discs using HandBrake and how to speed up the encoding process using GPU encoding if you're interested? ua-cam.com/video/gQV5RX2YUiY/v-deo.html In HandBrake I like to use the HQ 1080p 30 Surround preset and either the H.264 or H.265 codec and pack 'em into a .mp4 container and all my stuff plays great on my Wireless Pro. Hope this helps. :)
Overall it works great and my family and I enjoy it but it does have some quirks that can be annoying at times. The biggest quirk to be aware of is PLEX wants you to be connected to the internet initially for it to work. Even though you can change the settings to allow for offline playback I've found before we leave on a road trip and are home I need to connect the Wireless Pro to our home Wi-Fi and then connect whatever devices we're going to be using to the Wireless Pro and go into PLEX and make sure everything is working properly. One road trip after making this video I just assumed everything would work because I had set everything up when making this video and we got on the toad and my kids tablets wouldn't connect with PLEX. It just told them the server was offline. Once we got to a place with internet I connected the Wireless Pro to the internet and then logged in with my kids tablets and then it worked fine after that but I've found if I don't do that before every road trip inevitability someone can't connect via PLEX. As a backup to this I loaded VLC media player onto our devices which has no problem at all browsing files on the Wireless Pro and streaming movies and TV shows from it. I just like PLEX for my kids because it shows the movie jackets and they can browse movies that way. Using VLC or the WD app doesn't have any of the frustrating quirks that PLEX has but you're just navigating a file tree with just text which doesn't work well for kids that can't read yet.
Maraksot78 yeah I was wondering about that! Then I was trying to think of an app that would work on ALL devices in that situation. We are gonna use it at the lake with no internet (at least until Starlink come out). So everything will be done on smart tv’s or streaming stick. What’s your favorite app?
Maraksot78 I was also thinking of just doing a local server since it wouldn’t need to be portable. I have a extra router to use as an access point so I would just need a server of some sort. Maybe a Mac mini or mini pc, not sure how I’d do that
If I'm not using PLEX; for devices like smart phones and tablets I like to use VLC because you can navigate to your network device like a NAS and then stream your content that way without any trouble at all. For a smart TV or streaming stick like a Chromecast, Fire TV or Roku I've only used PLEX so far so I haven't looked into other options really. I have used the media player built into our Roku Ultra to stream stuff straight from our NAS (Network Attached Storage) but that requires navigating your file tree and the Roku interface for it I'm not fully used to yet so it took me a bit to figure out how to navigate to what I wanted to watch. If you're looking for a pretty simple to use media server I use a WD MyCloud Mirror which is our home NAS. It has the PLEX app available for it which is what got me looking into PLEX. It's not an powerful enough device to transcode video on the fly which is one of the things many people like about using PLEX but it has no problem just directly streaming content to our devices. So far it's worked great for me and my family so I haven't felt the need to upgrade to something better. That being said I have thought about building a more powerful PLEX server but that's as far as I've gotten... just thinking about it. XD
From the Wireless Pro? Yes, it works like any other Plex server. As long as you have the Wireless Pro connected to the same network as your smart TV, your smart TV has the Plex app on it and your logged into your Plex account which the Wireless Pro server is linked to then yes, it operates like any other Plex server.
If there is an mp3 file on wireless drive, and on my phone i open the my cloud app and nevigate to the file and use vlc player on my phone, can i listen to the mp3 or i need this plex mombo-jumbo thing? I cannot understand the pain for playing a single video file :( Thanks
@@seek4truth Plex offers a more user friendly Netflix style interface rather than a typical file tree. I use this as a movie server for my kids on toad trips and it's much simpler for them to navigate the Plex menu than a file tree in the MyCloud app.
Does this still work for you without an internet connection? I got it to work once and never again after that.
mine still works fine without internet.
@@Maraksot78 Some users on the Plex forums report that if you have Premium (which I do) it will always ping for authorization no matter the "allowed without auth" settings. I reset Plex on the WP and created a second basic account, which worked the one time. After that, the server couldn't be found unless connected to the internet. If I figure it out I will post here.
Hmmm... that is interesting... and a bit frustrating. I don't have a Plex Pass or Premium or whatever it's called, I just have a free basic account and it works fine for me. I hope you find a solution. I'm very interested to know what exactly is going on there and what can be done to fix it. Best of luck to you Mark.
@@markbowen9084 Ok, I've been messing around with my Wireless Pro since you brought this up. I turned mine on and was able to use Plex just fine. I then checked to see if it's connection to the internet (my home network) was on and it was so I turned it off. At that point I wasn't able to access Plex any more. The app on my phone told me the server was offline even though my phone was connected to the wireless pro directly and not to my home network. I then rebooted the Wireless pro while leaving it's connection to the internet turned off. Once it had rebooted it worked fine. I was able to open the Plex app on my phone and access all my content on the wireless pro just as if I had been connected to a server connected to the web. Hopefully this will work for you too. Cheers. :)
@@Maraksot78 OK, we are getting somewhere! Those were the same symptoms I had after it seemed to work the one time. My phone was connected directly to WP but the Plex server was showing offline. I tried your method of rebooting the WP Pro with the wifi already turned off and at first that seemed to fix the problem BUT the server eventually went offline again. After some fiddling around I've determined that everything works as long as I ALSO turn off the data connection on my phone! I've tried with my Premium and secondary Plex accounts and the behavior is exactly the same: data on, Plex server offline; data off, Plex server online. Do you happen to know if your phone was on a data network when it worked for you? I'm thinking that for the "allowed without auth" settings to work both the client and server must have no internet access. I can live with that as workaround for now but I'm trying to use this as a music server setup with Android Auto, and without data it's kind of... lame. :)
Thanks bro. My wife, 3 kids, and I take a yearly trip 2 full days of driving. I am looking forward to using one of these for the trip. I just wanted to hear a real person say real things about it. 👍👍
so far it's been a great little road trip companion for my wife and I and our kids. Best wishes to you and yours. :)
Just what I needed to get My Passport running in stand-alone mode. Thank you for the hard work you put into this looking up all the details to make it work.
You're welcome. I'm happy to know the video helped you out. Thanks for your very kind comment. Cheers. :)
Man, thanks for this. Exactly the questions I wanted answered. I’m about to start a cruise ship job. Limited internet for 6 months and no access to my primary Plex server. Time to start encoding for smaller file sizes I guess.
Nice video Brian, that's a handy thing to have! When I was still in the military, I created something similar because I wanted a streaming service/device when I deployed. Certain locations wouldn't let you bring any hard drives so I wound up using Subsonic instead of Plex. It's a media server that can stream all my media to any device with an internet connection. It can also stream w/out an internet connection, but it works by creating user accounts that can be logged into from anywhere and I still use it.
Nice! I've never heard of Subsonic. Sounds similar to the way Plex works. I'm not familiar with many other media serving apps. I'll have to look into subsonic and see what it's like. I wanted to use Plex for this to make it easier for my kids to navigate. Their interface is more Netflix-ish which is what my kids are used to. The MyCloud app is just navigating your typical file tree.
Nice think i will be getting this for the long journeys in the car with our son as he has my hand me down iPad mini this will make sense for me. thanks for the great video subscribed
Just FYI it can be a little quirky when using PLEX. Make sure any devices you're going to be using with it while on the road have all been 'paired' while you're home connected to the internet before you head on a trip. What I mean by paired it is seems Plex needs to associate the device with your account before it will allow it to stream content from your server even when you're offline connecting directly to it. I learned this recently the hard way. My wife tried to connect her iPad while on a road trip and even though I have her iPad associated with our Plex Account for our home NAS server I couldn't access the Wireless Pro via Plex because I'd never logged into it while connected to the internet. You can connect to it via the WD app and stream that way no problem but when using Plex you've got to jump through a few hoops. And of course if you have more than one Plex Server (which I do, my home NAS and then the Wireless Pro) you'll need to make sure your clients are connected to the Wireless Pro Server in the Plex app. But if you're familiar with Plex then I assume you already know this. Anwyway, thanks for checking out the video and Cheers! :)
You definitely do not need to put movies into their own movie folder, it works fine with them all in one.
imagine getting pulled over by the cops, "IS THAT MOVIE YOUR WATCHING ILLEGAL?" 👮♂🚔🚔🚨🚨🚨
Wanna skip to a particular portion of the video? Use the Time Stamps. :)
-- Time Stamps --
0:00 - video Intro
0:41 - why I bought the WD My Passport Wireless Pro
2:40 - setting up PLEX on the Wireless Pro
4:15 - adding a Library to your PLEX server
5:24 - Create a Digital Backup Copy of Your DVD & Blu ray Movies - MakeMKV & HandBrake
5:43 - My Passport Wireless Pro not powerful enough to transcode
6:10 - how to best organize files for PLEX
6:50 - adding a Library to your PLEX server continued
8:08 - how to get PLEX to work when not connected to the internet
9:38 - battery life while running 2 simultaneous streams
10:18 - how many simultaneous streams does the Wireless Pro support?
10:36 - while using the PLEX app?
11:19 - while using the WD MyCloud app
12:10 - video conclusion/final thoughts
12:40 - Thanks for Watching! Like, Share, Comment & Subscribe! :)
thank you for these guides Marak. Im also having trubble connecting outside my home network.
You're welcome. Thanks for checking out the video. I have also had trouble getting devices to connect to the Wireless Pro via Plex for the first time when not connected to the internet. I've found I have to connect the device first at home with internet and then it connects fine later without internet.
Thanks!
Thank you. Your Super Thanks is greatly appreciated. It helps me continue to make what is hopefully helpful/useful content. 😀👍
looking for something like this, but with an HDMI port, for a small tv, plug in and get plex. This is for a few ambulance for long trips for patients transfers.
Thanks
Hey I know I’m 3 years late, but does this method still work? And is there a better drive to get now?
Up on this
2tb? Since that is an hhd, I'm thinking of chucking that and putting maybe a 4tb, thanks for the video.
Oh I replaced My drive with a wd blue 4tb ssd what a world of difference it must be the blue series something to do with the drive controller.
That’s actually really cool, I came from your Corsair void pro review and decided to check out your channel. You definitely deserve more subscribers and views
Thank you very much. That's very kind of you. Happy to hear you enjoyed the video. Thanks for watching and for leaving a comment it helps out more than you know. Cheers! :)
can i add a library on plex that is on my tablet (if plex is on the tablet) not as a server but just because i love the interface
I have never seen such good image quality as yours in youtube. It is exordinary. I wonder what cam is used.
Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed the video. The camera I use the Panasonic Lumix G7.
Just use Kodi and connect your hard drive through SMB
Also you should try to stream 4K content and see how it handles it
Will this work on my new ipad pro? Can I connect it (via the same network) to my ipad and watch videos from my external hard drive, through flex, on my ipad?
Lmao your daughters were probably mortified by your daughter clip. I lol on that one.
Great tutorial. I got it working last year. Then I had to reset the drive for a couple reasons. I'm doing so, I had to re-add the fils to the drive. Once done, restored Plex, added library. After scan, it brings all the files in. But, on certain files I access from plex player, it says "Unavailable". Plex can't access or find the file. It's not all, only some. I didn't move directories or anything and the files are there in the path listed in Plex. Format of the file is the exact same as others h264/aac. Reset and established Plex again; same issue. Went down the Google rabbit hole to no avail. Any ideas?
Have you ever played around with doing something like a Roku stick that can plug directly into the vans video inputs? I want to use the vans screen rather than individual devices but obviously my older van cannot connect to a wireless player.
Great video....thanks
What if I have already painstakingly picked my own box art for my files that I prefer and do not want plex to find its own? Can I do that?
Need help, great video, followed your steps, but not quite sure how to sign into plex once connect to wifi on passport, on my phone I have the plex app, app asks me to sign in my plex, which I have but still nothing
are there any like this that are not running on battery , i would like to leave something at home and run off of wifi or cell service, and still have lots of storage,
Late to the party.... does Western Digital not make the My Passport Wireless Pro Portable External Hard Drive anymore?
Hello a question. I think you got 2 DVD players for your car. Can you tell the best one for this, or the one you have.
Question....Can I just get an external hard drive for home use and keep it plugged into my Desktop PC? I need extra space for all my movies and TV shows I'm ripping. Thanks!
Once you delete any content from the folders on the WD, does Plex server no longer allow you to stream the deleted files? Also, wondering if you can make a removable SD the source folder for Plex Server to use if you're using the WD My wireless Pro (since it has a SD slot and all)?
How come it ask for files under 5 gig s most new movies are 7-8
I recently got this drive, but I got a few problems. My mac and iPhone can not connected to the WIFI in this drive(Windows works fine), sometimes the iphone works, but the mac just doesn't works, and the system says the wifi does not have IP address, but it surely has. How I can I solve this problem?
And How can I stream videos to multiple devices? Because I found that once one device connected to the drive, my other devices just can not connect to it.
Hey thanks for the video! I got the wireless pro for a portable media streaming option. I got it connected at home with no problem and followed the steps you mentioned. I’m new to Plex so I may have messed up, but it gave me an error through Plex when trying to pull it up offline on our trip. On the Plex screen it keeps saying the server is not claimed. I claimed it once connected to the internet at our hotel but it popped right back up when not connected to the internet again. Any thoughts or suggestions?
Does the device you're connecting to it with have mobile data enabled? There was another guy that was having a similar problem and we found if he turned the mobile data on his phone off then it would work. Also I've found that any device that is connecting to the Wireless Pro via Plex needs to first be connected to it while you have the wireless pro connected to the internet. I tried connecting my wife's phone once while we were out on the road and it wouldn't work until we got to a place where we could connect the wireless pro to wifi. I believe what's happening is you need to authorize your device with your Plex account online first and then it will work offline later.
Thanks...I’ll give this a try and let you know. I am trying to run it on our hp laptop, so I may try turning the WiFi off once it is authorized.
Hi Brian, Thank you so much for this video. Last year I made the plunge and bought a second had Wireless Pro (because I missed the boat for a new one!). On our 3 day road trip to the Grand Canyon this was a life saver! I even used it as recently as March this year on a 5 hour road trip. Just this week however, it has stopped working!! devices that previously worked fine now say the server is offline. I've tried connecting to the Wireless Pro while it is connected to the internet through my home WiFi (something it seemed I had to do the first time I connected a new device), and all devices work but as soon as I disconnect from the internet the server not online error pops up. Have you encountered this issue? All my devices are Apple (phone and ipad). Perhaps a software update prevents this from working now... I appreciate any thoughts or input as it keeps my kids and wife (who hates tech and doing anything to manage it for kids) much happier when this is working. Thanks so much!
To be honest my family and I haven't used this drive with Plex in a year or two. We have experienced the issue where the Plex app on our devices won't connect to it, but I found if I connected our devices to it while we were home and connected to WiFi right before leaving on a trip they would then connect fine during the drive. But once again it has been a couple years since I've messed with it because my kids are now old enough to read and navigate a file tree so we've just been using the VLC media player app which allows them to browse the files on the drive and then stream them wirelessly without having to use Plex. It works WAAAAYYYY more effortlessly but of course it doesn't give you the nice looking user interface with all the movie jackets and stuff like Plex does.
Another thing I don't quite understand, maybe someone can explain it to me, when you attempt to sign into to plex on the wd passport, how does the app know what Ip to look for?
@3:00 out of the box it has plex ready to download and install? why? are they associated with each other?
lol thank you.
Hi Brain. I have been trying to get plex on wdmpwp and is there suppose to be an icon on the server? I can't get plex to download to the WDmpwp. I'm using it with my Macbook pro.
Can you please help me. Thanks
At 2:40 I show how to set it up from a PC. Is your Wireless Pro not working/giving you the same option mine does?
@@Maraksot78 Yes, but it doesn't look like plex was downloaded to the WD. I have had done several system restores. I do have my Seagate, where I keep my plex folder on, connected to my laptop.
Did a self diagnostic and it is fine. Also when I unplug it form the outlet and then plug it back in I loose my home wifi connection and have to use the My Passport wifi. I'm getting frustrated with this. I have been trying to get Plex to work for over a week now and nothing. i will keep trying. Now I can't even get my Plex folder to move to the WD. I don't know what I'm doing wrong.
@@LynnDippel I'm very sorry to hear this. That sounds very frustrating. This sounds like one of those problems that would be much easier to address if I could physically be there. Of course that's not really possible so I will attempt to help the best I can. I would suggest seeing if there is a firmware update available for your MyPassport Wireless Pro. You should be able to do that through the Wireless Pro's dashboard under the firmware tab. Perhaps your unit needs to be updated?
@@Maraksot78 I did a firmware update and it was current. The problem might be is that I have lousy internet connection. Wifi on, wifi off. I will be calling them on Monday. I will let you know happens. Thanks for your help for now.
@@LynnDippel I also had a problem with the wifi on my Wireless Pro and found if the password for your home network has any special characters in it (i.e. & % $ # @ ! *) you will have problems with the Wireless Pro connecting to your network as well as other connectivity problems. The first time I set it up it worked but after that things went all haywire. I did a factory reset multiple times and every time after the reset I would get things set back up again and it would seem to be working fine but the next time I turned it on nothing would work. At that point I was ready to return my Wireless Pro. I talk about this in my Wireless Pro review video but don't say anything about it in this one. Anyway, I decided to try to find a solution one more time before returning it and I found some info on WD's website saying the Wireless Pro does not support network passwords with special characters in them. It only supports alpha-numeric characters. I had an ampersand (&) in my home network name and password so I changed them both (not sure I needed to change the network name but I decided to change both just for good measure) so I only had letters and numbers in it and after that all the problems I was having were gone! Since then it's been smooth sailing. Not sure if this is what you're experiencing but when you mentioned you were having problems with the wi-fi it reminded me of this.
Hi there I’m actually having problems with my passport wireless pro the problem is when I start using it after 2 minutes it’s crushing and all the lights blinking so I can’t download anything i have to turn it off and turn it on again and start over I don’t know what’s wrong with it I don’t know what to do could you please help me with this problem thank you so much
good job Brian. I just wanna replace my PLEX media server desktop with a 24/7 wireless external hdd. For now i'm using handbrake to convert the movies and hardprint the subtitles to .mp4 cointaners, also using the 'Optimize' plex solution, since my desktop is entry-lvl. Is this gonna work? Running the optimized .mp4 from WD MyP Wless Pro and not having to turn on my desktop. Will have the external hard-drive not in sight. Thanks for your time!
Personally I wouldn't recommend this for a home Plex Media Server. I would recommend getting a NAS that connects to your router like a My Cloud Mirror or something instead. That's what I have and use as a Plex Server in our home is a My Cloud Mirror. The downside however to using a NAS like the My Cloud or this My Passport Wireless Pro is the CPU in them isn't powerful enough to do any transcoding so if your client can't stream the video in it's native format/quality level then you won't be able to watch it from one of these devices. Using the Wireless Pro as a Plex server I only really recommend for road trips and stuff TBH.
@@Maraksot78 Thanks for the quick reply. Indeed, if you keep charging after reaching 100%, i've read that there are thermal issues on Wireless Pro. I'll give My Cloud Mirror a look :) Thanks again
Thanks for good review! I record 4K, MP4 movie, 30P at 100Mbsp. Will the WD My Passport Wireless Pro play 4K? If yes, what is the best way to do it? if no, what is work around. Thanks for help in advance
Thanks for checking out the video and for the question. Unfortunately the Wireless Pro isn't quite powerful enough to wirelessly stream 4K video as far as I know. From what I've read it tops out at about 8Mbps for 1080p streams. You can of course plug the wireless pro into a computer with USB 3 and view 4K content you have saved on the wireless pro but when it comes to wireless streaming I don't believe the wireless pro is powerful enough.
@@Maraksot78 Thanks for the quick answer. I will consider an NAS for 4K streaming and regular USB-3 portable HD to field backup my 4K video from SD card. As a test, I have connect the Lexar SD card reader with SD card to USB-3 of my $200 iWork10 Pro Tablet, and Toshiba USB-3 drive to iWork10 Pro USB-2 port, located on removable keyboard. It took 70 sec to transfer 800MB MP4 movie file to USB HD. Again, thanks for help. You have a talent to explain complicated thinks!
HOPING I CAN SET UP A PLEX SERVER ON MY NETGEAR M1
Hello, how do I upload videos from my hard drive to the plex media server. Do I need to connect it directly via USB in order to transfer my collection to the Wireless Pro? Thanks for your help.
So you're wanting to know what's the best way to transfer your media from your computer to the Wireless Pro? You can do it either via Wi-Fi or by using the USB cable. I prefer the USB cable as it is simple and fast.
can my passport wirelles pro run 24/7 using a wall socket?
I would assume so. Seeing as it's designed to be portable and turned on and off from time to time I don't know how 24/7 use will affect it however. There are other Home NAS solutions you can connect to your router that I feel would be a better option if you're wanting a 24/7 NAS/media server. I use the WD MyCloud Mirror but they do have other less expensive NAS devices as well that also support Plex.
Does this work for a ps4
it wants me to download the Server app on my computer, I can't fit my entire library on my computer and docent that defeat the purpose of the HD? You skipped a big part in this video. How to tell Plex that the HD is the server not the computer that I'm doing this one....HELP!
at 2:40 I show how to set up Plex on the Wiress Pro. You need to log into the My Passport Wireless Pro's dashboard from your web browser. I was assuming you would have already set up your wireless pro and were already familiar with how to log into the dashboard. Here's a link to WD's support page that should help. support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=13879
I am getting my butt kicked here... I am able to take my iTunes videos convert them to a MP4 seamless but they play really choppy over the wireless drive. I did try using the handbreak to convert those files to a smaller version which does work but what a pain. do you know what video format I should use to help with the direct convert process? currently i have about 850 videos... 4 kids and a wife that do alot of streaming, this looks to be a awesome tool just need to get the data setup correctly.
I actually just made a new video showing how to rip DVD and Blu-Ray discs using HandBrake and how to speed up the encoding process using GPU encoding if you're interested? ua-cam.com/video/gQV5RX2YUiY/v-deo.html
In HandBrake I like to use the HQ 1080p 30 Surround preset and either the H.264 or H.265 codec and pack 'em into a .mp4 container and all my stuff plays great on my Wireless Pro. Hope this helps. :)
How has this been working for you thus far? Looking at doing this for my lake place.
Overall it works great and my family and I enjoy it but it does have some quirks that can be annoying at times. The biggest quirk to be aware of is PLEX wants you to be connected to the internet initially for it to work. Even though you can change the settings to allow for offline playback I've found before we leave on a road trip and are home I need to connect the Wireless Pro to our home Wi-Fi and then connect whatever devices we're going to be using to the Wireless Pro and go into PLEX and make sure everything is working properly. One road trip after making this video I just assumed everything would work because I had set everything up when making this video and we got on the toad and my kids tablets wouldn't connect with PLEX. It just told them the server was offline. Once we got to a place with internet I connected the Wireless Pro to the internet and then logged in with my kids tablets and then it worked fine after that but I've found if I don't do that before every road trip inevitability someone can't connect via PLEX. As a backup to this I loaded VLC media player onto our devices which has no problem at all browsing files on the Wireless Pro and streaming movies and TV shows from it. I just like PLEX for my kids because it shows the movie jackets and they can browse movies that way. Using VLC or the WD app doesn't have any of the frustrating quirks that PLEX has but you're just navigating a file tree with just text which doesn't work well for kids that can't read yet.
Maraksot78 yeah I was wondering about that! Then I was trying to think of an app that would work on ALL devices in that situation. We are gonna use it at the lake with no internet (at least until Starlink come out). So everything will be done on smart tv’s or streaming stick. What’s your favorite app?
Obviously Plex is much more easy to use
Maraksot78 I was also thinking of just doing a local server since it wouldn’t need to be portable. I have a extra router to use as an access point so I would just need a server of some sort. Maybe a Mac mini or mini pc, not sure how I’d do that
If I'm not using PLEX; for devices like smart phones and tablets I like to use VLC because you can navigate to your network device like a NAS and then stream your content that way without any trouble at all. For a smart TV or streaming stick like a Chromecast, Fire TV or Roku I've only used PLEX so far so I haven't looked into other options really. I have used the media player built into our Roku Ultra to stream stuff straight from our NAS (Network Attached Storage) but that requires navigating your file tree and the Roku interface for it I'm not fully used to yet so it took me a bit to figure out how to navigate to what I wanted to watch. If you're looking for a pretty simple to use media server I use a WD MyCloud Mirror which is our home NAS. It has the PLEX app available for it which is what got me looking into PLEX. It's not an powerful enough device to transcode video on the fly which is one of the things many people like about using PLEX but it has no problem just directly streaming content to our devices. So far it's worked great for me and my family so I haven't felt the need to upgrade to something better. That being said I have thought about building a more powerful PLEX server but that's as far as I've gotten... just thinking about it. XD
Can you stream to a smart tv?
From the Wireless Pro? Yes, it works like any other Plex server. As long as you have the Wireless Pro connected to the same network as your smart TV, your smart TV has the Plex app on it and your logged into your Plex account which the Wireless Pro server is linked to then yes, it operates like any other Plex server.
If there is an mp3 file on wireless drive, and on my phone i open the my cloud app and nevigate to the file and use vlc player on my phone, can i listen to the mp3 or i need this plex mombo-jumbo thing? I cannot understand the pain for playing a single video file :(
Thanks
You do not need to use Plex of you don't want to. You can simply use the MyCloud app if you prefer.
@@Maraksot78 then whats the difference? Tnx
@@seek4truth Plex offers a more user friendly Netflix style interface rather than a typical file tree. I use this as a movie server for my kids on toad trips and it's much simpler for them to navigate the Plex menu than a file tree in the MyCloud app.
So mp4 is the best
could this be done with an Nvidia Shield Pro with an external hardrive?
If anyone needs help setting it up in offline Plex mode msg me here I will be glad to help.
Its sad that plex doesn’t exist in Sweden
That is sad... VPN?
Maraksot78 nah brother out taxes are way to high for me to get anything else and also I’m 16 so that says much
100% free :/
HDD in a moving Van....I really worried for the lifespan of your wireless pro....