I’ve just set-up the latest version of Raspbian on my Pi, and followed this guide to install Plex Media Server.
removed link to bad tutorial by mod
I have connected an external HDD (AC powered) to the Pi, which has the name Silver. I’ve created one folder on this drive called TV.
When I connect the drive, it is shown at /media/pi/Silver
In PMS, the folder Silver shows up on the left hand side of the pane when I’m trying to add folders. However when I click on it, nothing happens and I can’t see the TV folder.
My understanding is that I need to mount the drive, and possibly change some permissions? Does anyone have a link to a guide that I could follow?
Thanks.
@“creative-2008@hotmail.co.uk” said:
I’ve just set-up the latest version of Raspbian on my Pi, and followed this guide to install Plex Media Server.
How to set up a Raspberry Pi Plex server - The Pi
Why is everybody using this broken guide and not just my “official” instructions? 
SEO still appears to be a thing :neutral:
My understanding is that I need to mount the drive, and possibly change some permissions? Does anyone have a link to a guide that I could follow?
You might want to take a look at the official Plex guide here in the forum [1].
[1] http://forums.plex.tv/discussion/279063/using-ext-or-ntfs-drives-internal-or-external-on-linux
Anthony.
See the permissions on Silver ?
That’s what’s holding you back. Only user root has permission (After the d, the next 3 are for the owner, the next 3 are for the group, and the last 3 are for everyone else.) Since they’re - (no permissions), nobody but root can get access.
That said
sudo find /disks/Silver -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \; - this does the directories (rxwr-xr-x)
sudo find /disks/Silver -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \; - this does the files (rw-r–r–)
Edit: You probably got excited about being so close and forgot that one step ? 
Hi ChuckPA,
Thanks very much for this. As soon as I read those lines I realised that, yes, I’d got a bit excited and skipped them.
Just ran them both now. (Thanks for the comments explaining them.) The command for the folders produced no output, and afterwards Plex is able to see all of the folders on the drive that previously it wasn’t able to.
However, the files command (which I’ve ran twice to be sure) produced a load of operation not supported messages for every file on the drive.
If it’s helpful to know, I believe that I formatted the drive in NTFS using Ubuntu, and then created the directories and copied files into them using Windows 10.
I’ve had a fair Google of it, but the vast majority of the forum posts are from pre-2010 and talk about NTFS not really being supported on Linux, so I’m not too sure whether they still apply or not.
Since I posted before,
I have tried creating a new folder in the root of the drive named ‘Silver’ using VNC whilst logged in as the user Pi and I get a permissions error and the folder can’t be created.
Then, I read another post (a few years old) that said the default NTFS driver supported read only, so I ran hte first line of this set of code, but it hasn’t made any difference…
sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g
sudo mkdir /mnt/usbdrive
sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbdrive
@“creative-2008@hotmail.co.uk” said:
Hi ChuckPA,
Thanks very much for this. As soon as I read those lines I realised that, yes, I’d got a bit excited and skipped them.
Just ran them both now. (Thanks for the comments explaining them.) The command for the folders produced no output, and afterwards Plex is able to see all of the folders on the drive that previously it wasn’t able to.
However, the files command (which I’ve ran twice to be sure) produced a load of operation not supported messages for every file on the drive.
If it’s helpful to know, I believe that I formatted the drive in NTFS using Ubuntu, and then created the directories and copied files into them using Windows 10.
I’ve had a fair Google of it, but the vast majority of the forum posts are from pre-2010 and talk about NTFS not really being supported on Linux, so I’m not too sure whether they still apply or not.
NTFS drives do not support setting permissions. ALSO, if you forgot the sudo (when run from your terminal environment) you will get the same error messages.
NTFS permission mechanisms are ACL based. The Linux default is UID/GID. Adding ACLs is available in the newer BTRFS filesystem or as an artificial layer (similar to Synology’s method).
Thanks again for your replies. I edited fstab to change ntfs to ntfs-3g and that has solved all of my problems.
Depending on whether I anticipate connecting the HDD to a Windows machine again in the future I might reformat as a format that supports GID.
For the meantime, I’ve set up a Samba share, so that I can write data to the external HDD (albeit at around 3-4MB/s). That’s something I’ll worry about further down the line though.
Also, I’ll start looking into how to get the drive to sleep when not in use, because it can be a little noisy when the TV is off. Many thanks for your help.
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