How to use NTFS drive in Plex Media Library on Ubuntu

If you’re here looking for a way to add NTFS mounted drive to Plex Media Libary and want to avoid the hassle of editing fstab file, then you’ve come to the right place. I’m running Plex Media Server on Ubuntu 16.04 for this guide. After installation, follow these steps to add an NTFS drive folder to your plex server.

Stop Plex Service

Run sudo service plexmediaserver stop from the terminal to stop plex service so that we make changes to plex configuration without breaking anything.

Server Configuration

Now edit plex config files. Open /etc/default/plexmediaserver file with an editor of your choice. I’m using nano.

sudo nano/etc/default/plexmediaserver

Find this line export PLEX_MEDIA_SERVER_USER=plex and change plex to your own username.

Systemd Service Configuration

Now we need to override plexmediaserver systemd service configuration and change user and group that runs the server. On Ubuntu run sudo systemctl edit plexmediaserver and add these lines to the configuration file.

After saving, reload sytemd configuration with sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Media Library Folder Permissions

We also need to change Plex Library folder permissions. Run

sudo chown -R youruser:youruser /var/lib/plexmediaserver

Start Server

sudo service plexmediaserver start to start your plex server.

Now you’ll be able to add an NTFS folder to your Plex media library.