Using Synology Nas as external HDD enclosure?

[Janick]

Hi

I got an old Synology DS411 that can hold 4 Drives and I am currantly using a desk client from Lenovo rocking a i5 7Gen as a server/storage device. I am using Ubuntu server on it. As my desk client is small and can only hold 1 2.5" HD/SSD I am running out of storage. Especially I now want to host my movie library on it using plex. As I got an old Synology Nas I want to know if there is a way to use it as a external HDD cage. The processor from a 10 year old Nas is not really up to stream movies from and to my knowledge plex ended support for this OS some time ago. So for me It would be awesome if I could connect my nas via USB directly to my “server” and just access just like a hdd safing me the money I would have to spend for a hdd cage. Is there a way?

[vivante]

Does it have to be USB? Mount Synology share on your new server and let the new server do the transcoding.

May not be power efficient enough to justify tho…

[Aug]

I don’t think you can use it as such
But if you’re got it contained within your network, you can use the NAS to host the files for Plex. That shouldn’t be a problem as the network speeds should be high enough to not be a bottleneck, as long as you’re able to offload the recoding to your newer machine.