# How to allow Plex ánd Nextcloud access to external HDD **URL:** \ **Category:** ℹ️ Support\ **Created:** [May 1, 2017, 9:25pm UTC](https://help.nextcloud.com/t/how-to-allow-plex-and-nextcloud-access-to-external-hdd/12030 "2017-05-01T21:25:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![glotzbach](https://help.nextcloud.com/letter_avatar/glotzbach/32/5_5575768a8748004e209b776fc1b2916d.png) [@glotzbach](https://help.nextcloud.com/u/glotzbach)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 9:25pm UTC](https://help.nextcloud.com/t/how-to-allow-plex-and-nextcloud-access-to-external-hdd/12030/1 "2017-05-01T21:25:06Z")
It’s been quite an undertaking but I’m almost finished: a raspberry pi 3 with VPN, webserver with Nextcloud and Plex. There’s a few things that I still wanted to edit and one of them is the following: To my WD-Pi set-up, I have attached an external HDD, that holds all my media (photos, homevideos, our CD-rips, etc). The issue is: I want both Nextcloud and Plex to have access. I don’t seem to get this combination working. Following [this answer](https://superuser.com/a/695186) on [superuser.com](http://superuser.com) I created the group _mediausers_ and added the users _plex_ and _www-data_: ``` sudo groupadd mediausers sudo usermod -a -G mediausers plex sudo usermod -a -G mediausers www-data ``` The drive was (already before connecting it to my Pi) formated as vfat (or so it appears on the Pi). With the following line on /etc/fstab I mounted the drive (partly based on [this post](https://help.nextcloud.com/t/you-dont-have-permissions-to-upload-or-create-files-here-local-external-ntfs-3g-storage/5420/4)) with mediausers as the group: ``` UUID=1B1C-14D8 /CloudMEDIA/ vfat nofail,uid=pi,gid=mediausers,umask=003 0 0 ``` Without umask Plex happily serves my pictures but I get a ‘you don’t have permission to create or upload in this folder’-error in Nextcloud. With the umask Nextcloud is happy and allows me to do what I want, but Plex doesn’t serve any media anymore (‘Unavailable; please check the necessary drive is mounted’). How can I make both Plex, Nextcloud and myself happy? How do I get file/mount permisssions right? Any help much appreciated! 🙂 * * * Nextcloud version _(eg, 10.0.2)_: 11.0.3 (stable) Operating system and version _(eg, Ubuntu 16.04)_: Raspbian Jessie Apache or nginx version _(eg, Apache 2.4.25)_: Apache PHP version _(eg, 5.6)_: 7.0.16 Is this the first time you’ve seen this error?: yup, changing umask values & mounting makes Plex & Nextcloud (not) work ---
**Author:** ![Lox](https://help.nextcloud.com/user_avatar/help.nextcloud.com/lox/32/881_2.png) [@Lox](https://help.nextcloud.com/u/Lox)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 10:23pm UTC](https://help.nextcloud.com/t/how-to-allow-plex-and-nextcloud-access-to-external-hdd/12030/2 "2017-05-01T22:23:06Z")
What are the permissions on the /CloudMEDIA mount point ? BTW, I would use NTFS or, better, a linux filesystem. ---
**Author:** ![glotzbach](https://help.nextcloud.com/letter_avatar/glotzbach/32/5_5575768a8748004e209b776fc1b2916d.png) [@glotzbach](https://help.nextcloud.com/u/glotzbach)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 10:49pm UTC](https://help.nextcloud.com/t/how-to-allow-plex-and-nextcloud-access-to-external-hdd/12030/3 "2017-05-01T22:49:27Z")
Hey there, Thanks for your reply. vfat partitions [cannot have permissions](https://askubuntu.com/a/118200) set in another way then describing them in fstab: > [@glotzbach](#): > > uid=pi,gid=mediausers,umask=003 . > [@Lox](#): > > BTW, I would use NTFS or, better, a linux filesystem. Totally agree. But the drive already holds all of my media files and I don’t feel like changing/migrating that atm. Will do at some point in future I guess. ---
**Author:** ![Lox](https://help.nextcloud.com/user_avatar/help.nextcloud.com/lox/32/881_2.png) [@Lox](https://help.nextcloud.com/u/Lox)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 11:02pm UTC](https://help.nextcloud.com/t/how-to-allow-plex-and-nextcloud-access-to-external-hdd/12030/4 "2017-05-01T23:02:51Z")
I’ve never added these fstab options for fat drives but I use set proper permissions on the mount point and that just works. That is why I was asking about the permission you have on /CloudMEDIA. ---
**Author:** ![glotzbach](https://help.nextcloud.com/letter_avatar/glotzbach/32/5_5575768a8748004e209b776fc1b2916d.png) [@glotzbach](https://help.nextcloud.com/u/glotzbach)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 11:16pm UTC](https://help.nextcloud.com/t/how-to-allow-plex-and-nextcloud-access-to-external-hdd/12030/5 "2017-05-01T23:16:49Z")
Ok. I had already made pi the owner and set mediausers as the group: `sudo chown -R pi:mediausers /CloudMEDIA/` `sudo chmod -R 775 /CloudMEDIA/` And consequently: `drwxr-xr-x 18 pi mediausers 32768 jan 1 1970 CloudMEDIA` ---
**Author:** ![system](https://help.nextcloud.com/user_avatar/help.nextcloud.com/system/32/29333_2.png) [@system](https://help.nextcloud.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2024, 6:16pm UTC](https://help.nextcloud.com/t/how-to-allow-plex-and-nextcloud-access-to-external-hdd/12030/6 "2024-09-23T18:16:33Z")
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**Author:** ![wwe](https://help.nextcloud.com/user_avatar/help.nextcloud.com/wwe/32/72963_2.png) [@wwe](https://help.nextcloud.com/u/wwe)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2024, 1:22pm UTC](https://help.nextcloud.com/t/how-to-allow-plex-and-nextcloud-access-to-external-hdd/12030/7 "2024-12-09T13:22:38Z")