I have just ditched WHS2011 for Windows Server Essentials 2012 R2. I had installed WHS2011 twice and it wouldn't do client backups for me. After getting WSE2012_R2 up & running, I created a Storage Pool and then Storage Spaces. The Storage Pool is about 21TB; I was disappointed to discover that the max size for Storage Spaces is 16TB. My question is, what is the best way to switch from Storage Spaces to Drive Pool? Should I just un-install the Storage Spaces & the Storage Pool and then install Drive Pool? I don't have anything other than a few backups on Storage Spaces yet and don't mind losing those if necessary. Also, is there any maximum size to Storage Pool?
Some background info on this server: it is home-built, in a PC Power & Cooling full tower case with 10 drive bays right up front. I originally started with WHSv1 on the mobo that was in it (had a 2.2ghz 2 core processor with 768mb of ram). This ran good for several years until it started having issues. In order to run WHS2011 I upgraded to a MSI 890FXA mobo with an AMD 6 core processor (2.8ghz) and 8GB of DDR3 ram. The WHSv1 server had 4x 500GB drives & 4x 1TB drives. I had to replace the 4x 500GB drives when I installed WHS2011. The current setup has 9 internal drives & 7 external drives, some USB2 & some USB3.
I plan on adding more external drives, some esata, some USB. I might even try mounting a drive cage from an old TerraStation NAS and adding 4 drives internally. I have a LOT of movies that I would put on this server, so I would like as much storage as possible. The movie files I wouldn't duplicate, but my music, pictures, & documents I would. Does this sound feasible using WSE2012_R2? I was originally drawn to the home server idea because of the way the OS managed the storage, unlike NAS boxes or computers with Raid 5, in which the drives had to be all the same size and preferably the same make. In the Home Server setup, you could install any size drives and the OS would take care of file duplication.