Should I Add a NAS to Windows Home Server 2011

[jgciamarra]

I'm currently using my WHS 2011 in conjunction with "My Movies" to copy my large DVD collection, enable streaming to HTPCs throughout the house, manage my movie collection, etc. It truly simplifies the management and end-to-end experience for my handicapped son who loves watching movies.

My WHS 2011 server is maxed out on storage (4, 2TB drives of copied DVDs). I was thinking of adding a NAS to provide additional storage capacity. Has anyone done this that would be willing to share their learning's/configurations? What NAS would you recommend? Can I use the NAS as an extension of the WHS and map the shares directly to it?

Do you have another approach you would recommend to increase storage capacity vs. using a NAS?

Any and all suggestions and guidance are welcome and appreciated. Thanks for your help.

 

[meaga1n]

Why not add a PCI-E SATA card and some more drives? Or is there someting I'm missing?
Otherwise the cheapest NAS by far would be an old PC running FreeNAS. There's also a way to get Synology's NAS software running on a standard PC as well although I can't link to it.

 

[jgciamarra]

Meaga1n - thank you for your response. Sorry for my naive questions. Current storage situation: All hard drive slots are used and I have no additional SATA slots available. Are you suggesting I add a PCI-E SATA card and add external hard drives? Should I go with a SAN configuration or do you have other suggestions? Thanks again for your help. Greatly appreciated.

 

[meaga1n]

Sorry, I'm no expert on this either!
If you have no physical room in your case, then it's going to be difficult.
The only thing I can think of for local storage is something like this http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hornettek-Enterprise-4X-Quad-bay-Capacity/dp/B00N2N3A4K/ref=sr_1_22?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1451736466&sr=1-22&keywords=4+hard+drive+enclosure and running it using USB 3.0 - if your board does not have a port you can always add a USB 3.0 card
Otherwise, I would guess that any NAS would allow you to add more HDDs and put with the right software would allow you to add them to the storage. Any old NAS will mount itself as a standard SAMBA share over the network and some even do Plex now but if you want to have one unified share with every film on that might be harder.
The HP Microsserver could also be a cheaper NAS alternative if you purchased one second-hand - this http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-ProLiant-MicroServer-N36L-1GB-RAM-No-HDD-VGC-Silent-FAN-upgrade-/281897304829?hash=item41a26382fd:g:a7cAAOSw3KFWg8~r looks like a good option when more RAM is added, as it would take another four drives.
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/316533-31-2011 it seems it might be difficult to add a standalone NAS so I would personally go for adding more drives externally or if the movies could be split up into 2 shares then just simply add another server and have two shares, like the microserver above

By external RAID, I mean something like this http://www.amazon.co.uk/Icy-Dock-MB662U3-2S-ICYRaid-Enclosure/dp/B00BR6TUB6/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1451737275&sr=8-11&keywords=raid+external which if I am correct would allow you to put 2 drives in and have them presented as one esata or USB 3.0 drive to Windows although I would say having another server would be a lot easier to setup.