Using a USB3 hard drive

[JamieG]

Hi all,

Hope one of you knowledgeable folk can answer this for me. I’m very new to Proxmox, and Linux in general actually, but have managed to setup a system I can play around with and test by stumbling my way through online tutorials and YouTube vids and I’m getting there gradually!

My eventual use case will be to use a low power machine (likely a NUC) for hardware to run a couple of containers / VMs (at the very least Plex and Home Assistant).

I have all of my media files that I use with Plex stored on a 12tb WD Elements usb3 hard drive (NTFS). The question I have is:

1. Can I make this hard drive accessible to Plex? If so, how would I go about this?
2. Along with making the drive accessible to Plex, it would also need to be a network share so that I can transfer new files to it.

I found this video of Samba being setup to use an external usb drive on an Rpi running Debian, and was wondering if this might work for creating the network share for Proxmox? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpH6JeLk6uA


I'm a complete newb so might be way off in terms of what I can do and how I go about doing it…but I’m here to learn and would massively appreciate any help you guys could offer.


Thanks guys



Jamie

 

[oguz]

hi,

I have all of my media files that I use with Plex stored on a 12tb WD Elements usb3 hard drive (NTFS). The question I have is:

1. Can I make this hard drive accessible to Plex? If so, how would I go about this?

you will need to passthrough it. for CTs take a look here[0] and for VMs see here[1]

1. Along with making the drive accessible to Plex, it would also need to be a network share so that I can transfer new files to it.

you will have to set it up as a network share on your PVE host in that case.

what i suggest is using a CT, so you just need to bindmount the local mountpoint after you set up the NFS/CIFS

[0]: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Unprivileged_LXC_containers#Using_local_directory_bind_mount_points
[1]: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/PCI(e)_Passthrough

 

[JamieG]

Thanks for the reply Oguz, just a couple of questions however

you will have to set it up as a network share on your PVE host in that case.

what i suggest is using a CT, so you just need to bindmount the local mountpoint after you set up the NFS/CIFS

Could you give me a little more info on this? When you say using a CT, in what way do you mean? Also, would setting up a NFS/CIFS with the usb hard drive require me to format it, or could i leave the file structure on it as it is?

I think some of the terminology might have gone over my head - I'm still very much a beginner at this.

Appreciate you taking the time to reply.

Jamie

 

[oguz]

hi jamie,

CT is short for container and VM is short for virtual machine.

with containers you can bindmount local devices or directories directly in the container from the host. after doing the bindmount, your container can access that device as the same as PVE host. that allows that container to write to that storage (there are many guides and threads in the forum about this, you can easily find it).

if you also set up NFS on the PVE host with that drive, other network devices can also access it.

check the link i've sent in my previous reply for an intro

 

[JamieG]

Thanks again,

CT and VM were two of the things i did get

Just so i'm clear, the steps would be:

• Mount the usb hard drive in the host
• Setup NFS on the host for the usb hard drive
• Bindmount the usb hard drive to the Plex container (currently an Ubuntu 18.04 container)

Hopefully that's correct?

I note that you link [1] above refers only to PCI(e) passthrough. Is it still applicable for USB devices?

Also, can you clarify whether setting up a new NFS share using the USB hard drive would retain the file structure, or would it need to be formatted during the process?


Thanks again for your assistance

 

[oguz]

I note that you link [1] above refers only to PCI(e) passthrough. Is it still applicable for USB devices?

pcie passthrough is for virtual machines as i said in that post also.

Just so i'm clear, the steps would be:

• Mount the usb hard drive in the host
• Setup NFS on the host for the usb hard drive
• Bindmount the usb hard drive to the Plex container (currently an Ubuntu 18.04 container)

yes pretty much.

Also, can you clarify whether setting up a new NFS share using the USB hard drive would retain the file structure, or would it need to be formatted during the process?

no need for formatting, just export the correct directories (this will make more sense if you read a NFS server setup guide online)

hope this helps