QNAP NAS Guide - How to Install and Setup a Plex Media Server

Buying your first Network Attached Storage (NAS) device can be a remarkably daunting task! Even for the most technologically knowledgable, a NAS is a very different kind of device than most of the hardware in your environment. At its heart, it is just a computer (like most things are when you break them down to the basics) that is built for a specific task. However, there are numerous elements of a NAS (such as it always being ON, the constant remote accessibility and focus on storage primarily) that set it apart from most other devices, and this si where a lot of people get a bit intimidated by it. There is always the option of using cloud services, such as DropBox, Google Drive, OneDrive and more, but these are often paid monthly subscription services, involve your data being shared across other services and (most worrying of all) leaves your precious data in a position to be used for analytics without your knowledge OR open to hacking because of the sheer size of the target. Add to this the fact that in most cases, a severed connection to the internet means a severed connection to your data, and the appeal of moving away from 3rd party cloud and on to a NAS is pretty clear. The industry of NAS has been in constant growth for over 30 years, with big players like HP, Dell and IBM steadily losing the home and SMB market to the likes of Synology, QNAP and more. The brand diversity in the field of NAS servers has continued to grow right up until 2021, with the benefit that the way you can interact with your data, what NAS devices can do and the price point of this technology being exceedingly affordable (with fully featured solutions WITH storage media arriving as low as £200). So, today I want to talk about what NAS is, what a NAS can do, and which NAS Brand you should consider buying in 2021.

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[jesse]

Love the videos and the hard work you put into all your reviews. Your videos helped me pick out my 453D NAS and HDDs, now I can follow along and set up my plex server! Cheers

[sweetwitch]

In all my searching, you're actually the first place to tell me to load the data onto the drive first. I can't tell you how much I appreciate that ;-)) I'm not big on using streaming etc so this is all very new to me!

[Electricmoon]

Thanks, great video!!
I’m very new, and still learning the ropes with my QNAP 453D, any chance I’d a walk through for “Calibea Web, I’m having so much trouble with the config location?

Cheers Nigel

[markytowers]

Any ideas on how to stop Plex running on the QNAP displaying duplicate copies of video files when there are @Transcode folders all over my NAS? I do use the QNAPs transcode feature but only want the MP4 videos showing within Plex UI. I don't need to see the original ones its moved to the @Transcode folder. Could do with a way of cleaning those up at some stage.

[riccardobergaglio]

nice done! so from what I understood while plex requires you to have a paid account to use hardware transcoding, video station can use it without problems? are there any other qnap apps that uses hardware transcoding (twonky, emby etc.)?

[albertcorda]

This is a great tutorial! I've gotten it all to work, but I have one remaining problem... how to set up a playlist? I've tried to set up playlists in both PLEX itself, and on the QNAP NAS using Music station. If I connect to the NAS using another DLNA clien (VLC Player on linux), I can see the playlist I set up using Music Station, but I can't seem to get the Alexa app to play it... I keep getting "I cant find playlist <name> on NAS1"... any idea where the playlist should be set up for access by Alexa (in PLEX, or on the NAS via Music Station?), or what I might be doing wrong? Any advice would be appreciated!
Thanks!

[mrtestshoot]

Having a problem accessing the movies on the server. I get the infamous "Error code: s1001 (Network)" error. I can't comprehend how launching the player from my server could generate such an error. I have a TS-653D connected to a router which is connected to my Win7Pro PC. I tried to find a solution and some say they needed to reinstall Plex. Don't know how re-installing would be different than installing. Seems the version that came with the new QNAP was old as it prompted me to do an upgrade of Plex, after which it asked me to do yet another upgrade but has stopped telling me to upgrade. I previously was running Plex on a ReadyNAS and didn't have this error.

Help please!

[The-Night-King]

Does anyone know how to access the server settings in plex, (I can't see them anywhere within the settings) because i am unable to connect to plex because its stating that my connection is not secure?

[erikwafler]

6:03 "go ahead and open plex", then in the new tab I get "this site cant' be reached"... I do not know what I've done wrong, but I cannot get around this issue. Does anyone know the solution?

[JazJonFL]

I've been running plex on a Windows computer. Any suggestions how to migrate my plex settings from Windows to a new QNAP system I'll be setting up next week? Or is it better to just start fresh and lose all my watch history etc.

[Suzukii-DIY]

Your videos I''ve watched since 2018. Awesome, they are, exceptional you are (Yoda on the mind?)

[sahrasassy]

used to work great on my TS-251D nas, then now plex asks me to claim the server it has a yellow circle but ive clicked the claim server a 1000 time and it dose

[Suzukii-DIY]

Always love these videos & some of the unexpected humor, "(I hate Seagulls)" moments.

[michaelcarraghan]

Trying to decide what to buy for Plex streaming I want to stream atleast 2x4k movies at the sametime. local. its between qnas or synology. but I hear many bad things about qnap with discounts software issues. Either QNAP TS-653D-8G or DS1621+
I could always buy m1 mac mini to stream more movies and for transcoding. can someone help me decide?

[jerseypaul]

Anyone else getting “no soup for you message” server not letting you in. ? I can’t work out what to do

[JazJonFL]

Why does it say Illegal name, when trying to create a new Folder Name: Multimedia

[Mike_Malloy]

Thanks for the tutorial. One word of advise, stop shaking the mouse cursor around to emphasize your pointer. The viewer is already follow the pointer so when it's jostling around all over the place it actually makes it harder to follow along. :)

[JohnSmith-zwpv]

Your connection is not secure, is this a 'feature' of PLEX?

[leohart]

Had this working last night shortly and then all of a sudden I get an error page that says site can't be reached.
The IP address refused to connect....help anyone????