If you can mount a Windows share permanently, you can mount a NAS share - the recipe is the same line, the same credentials file, the same safety options. What changes is the other end: a NAS has its own accounts, its own address habits, and one SMB setting worth knowing about.
People expect NAS mounting to be its own discipline. It is not. A Synology or QNAP shared folder speaks SMB exactly like a Windows share, so Ubuntu treats it identically: cifs-utils, a mount point, a credentials file, one line in /etc/fstab with _netdev and nofail, ownership presented with uid and gid. Everything from the core guide in this series carries over word for word. What does not carry over is the server side. The NAS is a small computer with its own user list, an address your router may keep changing, and SMB settings of its own - and those three quirks are where NAS mounts succeed or fail.
Do not learn a second method. The Ubuntu side of this page is the core guide: install cifs-utils, make the mount point with sudo mkdir -p /mnt/FamilyDocs, test the mount once by hand, test with mount -a, reboot last. The safety rules travel too - the password lives in a credentials file with 600 permissions, never in the fstab line, and the mount is presented as your user with uid and gid. If any step is unclear, the core guide explains it fully; this page covers only what a NAS changes.
/root/.nascredentials - because the NAS account is a different account with a different passwordA router hands out addresses by DHCP, and a NAS that reboots after an update can come back with a different one - at which point every mount pointing at the old address fails mysteriously. Names are the usual alternative, and names like the NAS's network name often work, but name discovery across a home network can be slow or inconsistent, especially after sleep.
//192.168.1.50/FamilyDocsThe account in your NAS credentials file is a NAS account, created in the NAS's own control panel - it has nothing to do with your Windows or Ubuntu users, even if you reuse a name.
/root/.nascredentials, locked with sudo chmod 600 /root/.nascredentials, exactly like the Windows fileBoth ends negotiate an SMB version, and the NAS lets you set its range. Modern NAS firmware defaults to a sensible window (SMB2 and SMB3) and Ubuntu's default negotiation lands inside it - most people never touch this. It matters in two cases.
vers=3.0 to the fstab options - or better, align the NAS range so default negotiation succeedsvers=1.0, with warnings - but treat the need as information: SMB1 is obsolete and unsafe, so that box should be isolated or retired, not re-enabled across a network to satisfy itWatch the video for the permanent mounting method in full - the same steps drive this NAS setup end to end.
Watch Full VideoYes - that is the fix, not a fallback. Name discovery on home networks depends on several chatty protocols staying awake and agreeing, and it breaks for reasons that are hard to see. A reserved IP address in the fstab line removes that whole layer, which is why this page recommends it from the start.
Yes - one fstab line per share, each with its own mount point. When both shares accept the same NAS account, both lines can point at the same credentials file, so a password change on the NAS means editing one file once. Different accounts simply get their own files.
It is a fair option and worth an honest sentence: NAS boxes offer NFS, which is native to Linux and presents real ownership instead of invented uid and gid values. If every client of that share is Linux, NFS is cleaner. In a mixed office - Windows PCs and Ubuntu side by side on the same folders - one SMB share for everyone is usually the simpler, saner architecture.