Best practice: Plex on Mac mini + Synology storage (SMB mount drops)

Plex Media Server
1

Hi all,

I’m running Plex Media Server on a Mac mini M4 and it’s working well overall.

My media library lives on a Synology NAS, connected via Ethernet on the same LAN (both devices are in the same location, no Wi-Fi). The Mac accesses the media via an SMB share.=

The problem: occasionally the SMB mount drops, which then causes Plex to lose access to the library until the share remounts (or I reconnect it manually). I’ve seen suggestions ranging from using macOS automount/AutoMounter-style tools to switching the library share to NFS.

Question: For a setup like this, what’s the most reliable approach to minimize mount dropouts and keep Plex’s library path consistently available?

  • Stick with SMB but change how it’s mounted (automount/launchd/fstab options)?

  • Switch to NFS from the Synology to the Mac?

  • Any Synology/macOS settings that are known to improve stability for Plex libraries?

Thanks in advance.

2

There’s not one single best method, you can see a lot of varying setups in this thread: Plex Files Unavailable but they’re not missing - #638 by Bat_Mang