I think TRaSH serves as a good base. Their custom filters can be instantly imported using recyclarr and give you a general idea of how custom filters are meant to be used (which can be very overwhelming when you’re new to the ordeal) but sadly I disagree with TRaSH a lot on their group tiers for media formats. I think they make some mistakes placing some encoders as high as they do. (for example: micro encodes from PTer and BHDStudio shouldn’t be in the BluRay groups at all, as some of their releases are compressed harder than WEB releases from streaming services. I download BluRay encodes because I want it to be compressed to the point where it still looks identical to the BluRay it was sourced from.) Once you’re in the game long enough you just make up your own mind on what release groups should be prioritized over others.

As for your question regarding staying within the same file system, the answer is yes. Moving things over to the SSD does two things for you. 1) for every file you also need a duplicate on the SSD, not very efficient. 2) there’s not much to gain from this unless you’re expecting a large amount of simultaneous traffic. An HDD can carry about ~20 streams of 1080p content (as most releases are compressed to 8-10mbps) which is more than enough for most households.

I’d keep the SSD for seeding honestly, so that you can build up buffer on the trackers you’re on, but for most it’s still perfectly doable with HDDs only.

I’d recommend most people start with the guides (I did, no regrets there). But expect to need to manually search for things sometimes because their restraints, by design, will block some “lesser quality” options. And if some flaw in the system is bothering you, you’ll hopefully have enough experience under your belt to tailor your settings at that point

Look out, I’m about to mention AI.

I had most arr things I wanted setup already. I have a putio stack mostly.

I decided to refactor the setup a while ago, shit was always breaking, and I just didn’t want to put time into it.

So I launched Claude code, started a server-manager repo, and about 3 hours later, I had a EXCELLENT setup, all my fave release groups on priority, resolutions I want, it found ally Plex media, stuck it in sonarr, reccomended I start a trakt account, which I did, and now every upcoming scifi, fantasy, horror, action flick gets picked up automatically, it created its own putio uploader, and downloader, I bought filebot on it’s reccomendation, and now all my media is renamed perfectly, I signed up for subs, I have subtitles everywhere. My audiobook library was imported, and it figured out what audiobooks I buy and what I don’t, gave me a stern talking to about piracy, then I launched opencode and used grok4 to process my audible books to remove drm. (Grok really doesn’t say no to many requests. However fuck Elon, so i don’t use it more often.) Claude setup a docker environment with qbitorrent, with a deadmans switch, it will only connect via my VPN. So I could get rid of putio, which I won’t.

I asked for monitoring and it spun up uptimekuma. In the middle of the project we decided to use coolify toanage everything. Again, it set the whole f’n thing up. This was the only thing I had to finalize, UNTIL I found out there’s an API, so Claude read the API docs and now runs my coolify platform.

Honestly the afternoon was fun as hell, claude-code just set everything up, I had to guide/steer it some, but it was able to read documentation on its own and tighten up my setup. It even optimized my docker to properly use my gpus. Now I have comfyui, ollama +gptoss, also running on my network with very little effort.

I have a max subscription, and after paying a few bills without it, I won’t go back. This setup burned a lot of tokens. It easily would’ve been a few hundred if I’d payed API rates. I think however a pro account would have enough tokens in a day to do something similar. You don’t even need Opus, Sonnet did fine.

So, if your stuck, get you a Claude pro subscription, hook up Claude code, and see if it can help you.

I use Claude almost all day, so this was pretty easy, but I cannot stress enough how much I dislike administering my media setup. Now I have a Claude custodian.

I’m not sure why anyone would be against hard links and atomics moves (which are basically the same thing) I can’t see the point of storing the files twice (once for torrent seeding and once for viewing) it saves space, it saves time.

I feel like the trash guides also assume you’ll have a lot of storage space. For instance their custom format guides are driven by quality and not space constraints (i.e. they are somewhat staunchly against x265).

This all being said, their guides are excellent and will save you a lot of headache in future. I wish I had followed them to a T sooner than I did. Specifically when it comes to profiles and custom formats.