Instead of messing around with permissions/ownership I chose to run Plex as my user (who has access to my hard drive/media). Simply edit the PLEX_MEDIA_SERVER_USER value in your Plex Server config located at /etc/default/plexmediaserver, e.g. PLEX_MEDIA_SERVER_USER=james Then restart the plex server: sudo service plexmediaserver restart Afterwards you can select media on your hard drive.