Help for a newbie to NAS'

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hobbygirl
hobbygirl Posts: 13  Freshman Member
First Anniversary First Comment
edited August 2020 in Personal Cloud Storage
I purchased a Zyxel NAS326 but not sure where to begin. I have questions that are not really addressed in the manual. I hope I can ask them here.

1. I have only USB external drives that I was hoping to be able to access as a media center. Do I have to purchase an internal drive for the NAS to work?
2. If I purchase an internal drive, can I then plug in the drive with all my movies and access it through Plex?

Thanks.

#NAS_August_2020

All Replies

  • Sakura_T
    Sakura_T Posts: 101  Ally Member
    First Anniversary Friend Collector First Answer First Comment
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    For you question 1, I think there must be at lease one internal volume to use APP center.
  • bezbota
    bezbota Posts: 7  Freshman Member
    edited August 2020
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    I don't think NAS326 works this way. You are supposed to insert internal hard drive first and format it in Storage Manager.  NAS326 will not accept your data on internal hard drive, internal hard drive must be empty before you put it inside, otherwise you will lose all data.

    Then you are supposed to open Control Panel and create Shared folders - for example I have several shared folders like software, training, photo, video, music etc.

    You are also expected to create users - at least one user. If you have a username ABC and password DEF on your computer, then is better to create user ABC with password DEF on your NAS also (then your computer will pass the password to NAS automatically in some cases).

    If you have a brother who has username RST and password UVW then insert this user in NAS also and you can define that your brother will have read-only access to all shared folders.

    NAS326 does not support many apps for remote access to your data and if you don't like the default ones you have almost on other choice.

    I think the best choice is to use network drives, for example X: for videos, Y: for music, Z: for shared etc. NAS326 is really good at it. Network drive is a windows feature:


    Then you can see every shared folder as an extra drive and you can choose any video player or photo viewer you like.

    When you see new drives in your computer (drives like X:, Y: Z: as I mentioned before) then is the right moment to copy data into all these folders.

    The main advantage of NAS is that you can see these drives in all your computers and you can share all data.
  • hobbygirl
    hobbygirl Posts: 13  Freshman Member
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    Thanks. I purchased a 4tb hard drive from the compatible list and it works great! Now, I would like to use it with Plex or be able to mirror my husbands movies on his external hard drive to our tv. Right now, I can only mirror what is on the local drive in the NAS. 
  • Scarlet Michelle
    Scarlet Michelle Posts: 1
    edited December 2020
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    I ran into the same problem, fortunately there was a workaround.
    You can see more interesting things at https://worldringtones.net/

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