How to get Sparkbox (/w media stack) to access external hard drive

Posted by Mark_

Hi I used to use CasaOS and I had my arr stack + Jellyfin download and access media from an external hard drive that I have mounted. Can this be done for Sparkbox cleanly without having to access a bunch of docker compose files? I do not have enough space for all of my media on the drive that Sparkbox needs to be on

4 replies

tomspark wrote:

Yep — that's exactly what SparkBox's MEDIAROOT setting is for: one line, no digging through compose files. It's the single folder the whole stack (downloads, Sonarr/Radarr, Jellyfin) reads and writes, so you just point it at your external drive: sudo sed -i 's|^MEDIAROOT=.|MEDIAROOT=/mnt/yourdrive|' /opt/sparkbox/.env && sudo sparkbox up Swap /mnt/yourdrive for your real mount path (run df -h to find it; avoid spaces in the path — those break it quietly). One thing to watch: the drive's folder needs to be owned by the media user, or imports fail with "permission denied" — if that happens, run sudo chown -R 1000:1000 /mnt/yourdrive. Then sudo sparkbox doctor confirms it's mounted, writable, and has space. If you paste your df -h line here I'll hand you the exact command for your drive.

Mark_ wrote:

Works, thank you

tomspark wrote:

Awesome — glad it's sorted! Enjoy the extra space. 🙌

tomspark wrote:

Nice. If you hit any permission issues down the road, just holler — that's the one gotcha with external drives.