Newbie here. I just got done setting up my media library and everything is working well. Then I ran into a problem last night. After restarting my PMS on a w10 box the mapped drive disconnected. That got me wondering if I made the right decision to map the drive rather than using the UNC path. I found this post here: How to change library paths to use UNC names instead of drive letters? to convert my library if that is a better method… So my question is does it matter how I connect to my NAS? Just when i thought I was done tinkering with PMS.
You almost answered this question yourself. 
You have already experienced how “reliable” those drive letters are.
They often take some time after login to be restored.
If you startup your Plex server before they are ready, trouble ensues.
So, the UNC method is recommended, unless you find a way to “delay” the automatic start up of Plex server.
Side note: to make accessing network shares more reliable on Windows, I strongly recommend to create a user account on your file server or NAS which has an identical user name and password to your Windows user account.
Although Windows is offering you to save the login credentials for network shares, this mechanism is even less reliable than the drive letters discussed above.
If you however use the same username and password on both Windows and the file server, access is working instantly.
Thanks for the response. I do have my login credentials setup as you’ve indicated. If I do decide to convert everything to UNC reference do I just follow the link I posted above or is there a better way to execute the conversion.
Also when backing up the PMS directory. If I run into issues do I just copy/paste the backed up copy into the directory and restart PMS with the old version? or is there more to it. I’ve spent about 2 days correcting all the metadata so I don’t want to mess that part up again.
You should know what a SQL command is. Otherwise the learning curve is steep.
I recommend you to save a backup copy of the main Plex database file.
There is no need to backup the whole metadata folder.
And you absolutely have to stop/end/quit Plex server before making the backup copy!
https://support.plex.tv/articles/202485658-restore-a-database-backed-up-via-scheduled-tasks/
Just wanted to report back. I backed everything up. Then tried the first method where I added the duplicate path. As I did that the movie posters flipped and updated to the UNC path. It never showed the 2 in the upper left hand corner. My metadata didn’t disappear so I was really thankful for that. Figured worse case is I restore the backup and proceed with the SQL update.
Even with the UNC path it still has problems connecting to the NAS until I go in there and open a NAS folder. I can live with that for now. Don’t want to mess with PMS for awhile and just enjoy it a bit.
Thanks again for the tips.
I have experienced this when the user name and password are not identical between Windows user account and NAS user account.
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