The following information has not yet been updated for the new support site.

Once you have your NAS set up and the shares created and configured, you need to take care of how the shares are mounted on the Plex Media Server hosting machine. The Plex Media Server accesses the files from a mounted share resource and this resource needs to be available whenever the PMS is active. This means that you will need to auto-mount the share so it’s available when you log onto the machine.

After mounting the Network drive  you will be able to add the folder/directories from them when creating a library on your Plex Media Server.

Related Page: Creating Libraries

Mounting Shares on Mac OS X

There are several ways to mount shares on Mac OS X:

Adding the share to your Login Item

Adding a Share to your Login Item will automatically mount it when you log onto your user account. This works really well as long as the share is available to mount when you log on, and the share is stable – meaning it doesn’t drop out randomly. If a share does drop out using this method, it won’t be automatically re-mounted. To do this:

• Mount the share to use in the Finder (Instructions from Apple here)
• Add the share to macOS “Login Items” (Instructions from Apple here)

Use a 3rd party application

Using the Login Items method won’t automatically re-mount a missing mount. There are 3rd party applications that will handle this condition.

• VolumeManager: Product page

Mounting shares on Windows

Mounting shares on Windows systems is generally handled by using ‘Map Network Drive’ in Windows Explorer or UNC paths.

To Map a Network Drive:

• Open Windows Explorer
• Mount the Share
• Right-click the Share and choose Map Network Drive
• Choose a Drive Letter

Note: Be sure to choose a Drive letter like Z:. If you choose a Drive letter close to your regular drives, the drive letter mapping can be changed by adding a new drive to your system.

Mounting shares on Linux

Mounting shares on Linux is generally done by editing the /etc/fstab file. There are a number of resources available on the Internet that offer help with this. Here is a good one:

Mount a Windows Share on Ubuntu Linux: Mounting an SMB Share in Ubuntu Linux