Adding a drive to Plex

[Themk2.]

Good evening,

I have Proxmox running on my NUC with a VM running Plex.

I don't have any network storage but have a USB HDD that I want to plug into my NUC and use as my Plex storage.

Please could anyone advise how I can achieve this or direct me to a good tutorial?
I've tried googling but the only tutorials I can find involve a NAS like Synology or a windows folder.

Thanks a lot

 

[Dunuin]

I've tried googling but the only tutorials I can find involve a NAS like Synology or a windows folder.

Yes, that is because there is no way to bind-mount a folder from the host to a VM. That only works with LXCs. So there are only 4 options:
1.) If you got a spare USB controller you can use PCI passthrough to passthrough the USB controller to your VM. In that case everything that you plug into these USB ports will be available to that VM. But really that single VM only. No other VM nor the host will be able to use all the USB ports of that USB controller. But that would be the most "physical" way to bring your USB HDD into the VM.
2.) You could use USB passthrough to pseudo passthrough the USB into the VM. In that case only that VM will be able to use the USB HDD and no other VM nor the host will be able to use it. This isn't recommended because USB passthrough isn't fast and will often cause problems because the USB protocol needs to be emulated.
3.) You use "qm set" to pseudo passthrough the USB HDD into your VM. Should be faster and more reliable than option 2 but it is still no real passthrough and emulation/virtualization is involved and the VM will only see that USB HDD as a virtual disk so no SMART and so on are working. And same as option 1 and 2 the data on that disk can't be shared by different VMs nor the host. But other than option 1 and 2 you cloud split up the disk into different partitions and different VMs could use different partitions. But multiple VMs can never share a partition so you are probably wasting alot of space. "Virtio SCSI" should be used as disk controller and "SCSI" as protocol for best performance and discard capability.
4.) You configure your PVE host or a LXC to work as some kind of NAS running a NFS or SMB server. Then you can add these NFS/SMB shares to your VMs to access the folders on that USB HDD. This is the only way how multiple VMs or the host could share the disk.

I would recommend option 4 using a OpenMediaVault LXC as your NAS where you bind-mount that USB HDD into. But thats alot of work and not that easy because of the user remapping of unprivileged LXCs. If you don't care that data can't be shared and you want it easier, you could use option 3.

 

[Themk2.]

Yes, that is because there is no way to bind-mount a folder from the host to a VM. That only works with LXCs. So there are only 4 options:
1.) If you got a spare USB controller you can use PCI passthrough to passthrough the USB controller to your VM. In that case everything that you plug into these USB ports will be available to that VM. But really only that single VM. No other VM nor the host will be able to use all the USB ports of that USB controller. But that would be the most "physical" way to bring your USB HDD into the VM.
2.) You use USB passthrough to pseudo passthrough the USB into the VM. In that case only that VM will be able to use the USB HDD and no other VM nor the host will be able to use it. This isn't recommended because USB passthrough isn't fast and will often cause problems because thr USB needs to be emulated.
3.) You use "qm set" to pseudo passthrough the USB HDD into your VM. Should be faster and more reliable than option 2 but it is still no real passthrough and emulation/virtualization is involved and the VM will only see that USB HDD as a virtual disk so no SMART and so on are working. And same as option 1 and 2 only this single VM will be able to use that HDD. "Virtio SCSI" should and "SCSI" should be used for best performance and discard capability.
4.) You configure your PVE host or a LXC to work as some kind of NAS running a NFS or SMB server. Then you can add these NFS/SMB shares to your VMs to access the folders on that USB HDD. This is the only way how multiple VMs or the host could share the disk.

I would recommend option 4 using a OpenMediaVault LXC as your NAS where you bind-mount that USB HDD into.

Thanks so much for your quick and in-depth reply.

I had considered option 4 (I think...) by installing TrueNAS? Sorry if this isn't similar - I'm very much a newbie to linux, proxmox and and kind of server/container. I got my NUC as I couldn't get hold of a HA Blue to run Home Assistant and it's spiralled since then into running HA, Unifi Controller and a Plex server - money definitely well spent!
Now I'm looking to get my storage online for Plex.

I'll do some research on OMV - thanks again!!

 

[Dunuin]

Thanks so much for your quick and in-depth reply.

I had considered option 4 (I think...) by installing TrueNAS? Sorry if this isn't similar - I'm very much a newbie to linux, proxmox and and kind of server/container. I got my NUC as I couldn't get hold of a HA Blue to run Home Assistant and it's spiralled since then into running HA, Unifi Controller and a Plex server - money definitely well spent!
Now I'm looking to get my storage online for Plex.

I'll do some research on OMV - thanks again!!

TrueNAS wont work because it is Unix and LXCs can only use Linux. So TrueNAS can only be run inside a VM an then you got the problem again that you can't bind-mount a USB HDD into a VM. So you would need to use Option 1 or 3 to bring the HDD into the TrueNAS VM and then use option 4 to bring the folders from the TrueNAS VM into other VMs.

 

[gravenstein31]

Good evening,

I have Proxmox running on my NUC with a VM running Plex.

I don't have any network storage but have a USB HDD that I want to plug into my NUC and use as my Plex storage.

Please could anyone advise how I can achieve this or direct me to a good tutorial?
I've tried googling but the only tutorials I can find involve a NAS like Synology or a windows folder.

Thanks a lot

I am planning to do the exact same setup where i have my content in a USB HDD and mount that device to the Plex which i am thinking to run on LXC, Did you find a solution for this?