🏠 Turn Your Raspberry Pi into a Networked Media Drive (NTFS-Compatible!)

If you've got an old Raspberry Pi and a big external hard drive full of movies, why not build your own networked media drive? In this guide, I'll show you how I turned my Pi into a shared drive using an NTFS-formatted 4TB USB drive — and how I’m streaming everything to my Apple TV using Infuse.

No Plex. No cloud fees. Just local storage, network access, and a little elbow grease. Let's go. 💪

🎯 What You'll Need

• Raspberry Pi (any model, preferably with Ethernet)
• Raspberry Pi OS (Lite or Desktop)
• External USB hard drive (mine is NTFS, 4TB)
• A static IP address or hostname for easier access
• Infuse (optional, but amazing for Apple TV playback)

🔌 Step 1: Plug In the External Drive

Connect your USB drive to the Pi. Then run:

lsblk

Look for something like /dev/sda2. That’s your main partition.

🧭 Step 2: Create Mount Point & Mount It

sudo mkdir -p /mnt/usbdrive
sudo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/usbdrive

Check access:

ls -l /mnt/usbdrive

If it's NTFS, you'll likely need to fix permissions later.

🧱 Step 3: Get the UUID & Add to fstab (NTFS FIX!)

To auto-mount it on boot, grab the UUID:

sudo blkid /dev/sda2

You'll see something like:

/dev/sda2: UUID="92A694EDA694D2D9" TYPE="ntfs"

Now edit your fstab:

sudo nano /etc/fstab

Add this line at the bottom (make sure to match your UUID):

UUID=92A694EDA694D2D9 /mnt/usbdrive ntfs defaults,nofail,uid=1000,gid=1000,dmask=027,fmask=137 0 0

Save and exit. Then reload:

sudo systemctl daemon-reexec
sudo mount -a

This tells your Pi to mount the NTFS drive with correct permissions every time it boots.

🛠️ Step 4: Fix Ownership & Permissions

Set the folder so your user (and Samba) can read/write:

sudo chown -R pi:pi /mnt/usbdrive
sudo chmod -R 775 /mnt/usbdrive

Replace pi with your actual username if different.

🌐 Step 5: Install and Configure Samba (for Sharing)

sudo apt update && sudo apt install samba samba-common-bin -y

Now edit the Samba config:

sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

Scroll to the bottom and add:

[SharedDrive]
   path = /mnt/usbdrive
   browseable = yes
   writeable = yes
   guest ok = yes
   guest only = yes
   force user = YOUR_USERNAME
   create mask = 0664
   directory mask = 0775

Replace YOUR_USERNAME with the same user who owns /mnt/usbdrive

Then restart Samba:

sudo systemctl restart smbd

🖥️ Step 6: Connect from Mac, Windows, or Infuse

On another device, connect to the share:

Windows

• File Explorer → \\raspberrypi\SharedDrive

macOS

• Finder → Go → Connect to Server → smb://raspberrypi/SharedDrive

Infuse (Apple TV / iOS)

• Add a new SMB share
• Server: your Pi’s IP or hostname
• Leave username/password blank (or use Guest)
• Browse and stream your movies 🎬

✅ Wrap-Up

With one Raspberry Pi and a big old NTFS drive, I now have a clean, no-frills shared media drive accessible from anywhere on my network. Infuse picks up all the media, adds artwork, and just works. No Plex bloat. No monthly fees.

Until next time — keep your bits clean and your network lean. 🖖

✌️OUT!

--Bryan