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Hi all , im looking at storing my dvds and blurays onto pc to use with plex , im in the uk and would like recomendations for the best external drives to buy thank you , i read the recommended section but got quite confused as to which ones work and which dont so any help is appreciated

"Best external drives" for what? Reading disks, or storing data? They're different things.

And storing data depends on how your plex server is set up. Some of us have plex available as an add-on to other hardware; others set up a plex server and add drives to them.

basically just want to rip the disks on to hard drives and play on my home plex server setup on my home pc

If you're looking to rip 4K disks, then you'll need one of the drives that supports that. There are topics about those, starting with Ultimate UHD Drives Flashing Guide Updated 2024.

As for drives to store stuff on, a lot will depend on how much you wish to store, and whether or not you want to reduce the size of the output for storage. Personally, I run everything through handbrake to shrink it (20-70%, depending on options), but some people do not want that. Multi-terabyte drives are getting cheap nowadays, and you can buy hardware that will manage them all over the place (I use Synology 8-drive units, but those are overkill for most people).

Just a reminder, though - how much you want to store WILL grow. Hardware that manages multiple drives as one "unit" is convenient.

If you need an optical drive, Pioneer brand drives are the best recommendation. Unfortunately, you're best off buying one from a seller on this board as a recent Pioneer firmware update prevents them from being able to rip 4K UHDs. Pioneer firmware update February 2023

If you live in Europe, the Verbatim 43888 drive has an older Pioneer unit inside it that'll work for ripping UHDs right out of the box.