How to use an SMB share on your NAS with Jellyfin on Windows

[nexxai]

This thread is basically just a summary of what I posted on my blog (https://nexxai.dev/how-to-use-an-smb-sha...n-windows/), but to recap:

If you have your Jellyfin server set up on a Windows device, it is possible to mount your NAS's SMB share in such a way that Jellyfin sees it without needing to mess around with NFS.

1. Make sure the Jellyfin service is running as an actual user, and not the SYSTEM account. You can verify (and change, if necessary) by opening the Services MMC (Start -> Run -> services.msc). Preferably, set it to use the same user account you actually login to your computer with. This will make it easier for the following steps.

2. Ensure that on your NAS, there is a user account created there (and this is crucial) with the exact same username and password as your PC. They must match character-for-character. So if your username on your PC is bobjones and your password is Q!W@e3r4T%Y^U&I* the account on your NAS should be bobjones and Q!W@e3r4T%Y^U&I* too.

3. Open a PowerShell prompt as an adminstrator

4. Decide on the local physical drive and folder name you’d like to mount the network folder to, and then have the network path to the folder ready. In this example, I’ll use C:\NAS for the local location, and \\NAS-01\Files, but remember that the local location can be any folder you want, as long as it does _NOT_ currently exist; this process will create the mounted folder and will fail if you try to mount the network folder to a folder that already exists.

5. In PowerShell, enter the following command: 
    New-Item -ItemType SymbolicLink -Path C:\NAS\ -Target \\NAS-01\Files

6. Open the Jellyfin console and confirm that you can now see C:\NAS (or whatever you decided to call your mountpoint)