I recently set up PMS running on my Linux PC, but I would like to move it over to a Raspberry Pi or some other single board computer so that I can leave it up 24/7 without running up my power bill.
I plan to use this only for my music collection, not for video. I have a large collection of around 1000 CDs which I am slowly ripping to the hard drive as FLAC files. My concern is the time that it takes for PMS to index those files. I did not time it, but it took quite a while for my Linux PC to index the 300 CDs that I have ripped so far.
So my question is whether the Raspberry Pi 3 would be the best choice for this application or should I consider using a Banana Pi, an ODROID, or some other single board computer?
I have been reading the specs on the various boards, but I'm not sure what is most important for this application. Is it the single core processor power? Does PLEX utilize multiple cores when indexing? Would a dual core Banana Pi Pro, with its built in SATA bridge give me better performance than a quad core Raspberry Pi 3 with just USB ports for the hard drive?
I initially plan to use a Seagate Slim Drive plugged into one of the USB ports for storage of the FLAC files, but I could remove the drive from its case if I went with a board that has a built in SATA port. And I might later upgrade to an SSD if the mechanical hard drive proves to be a significant performance bottleneck.
I would also like to know if this is only a concern for the initial indexing of the media files or will it also be a problem each time I add more music to the collection? Will the machine become unusable when an index is in progress or can it still stream media?