One of the coolest features of Windows Home Server is the ease with which you can add additional hard drives to the pool of storage you have available on your server.
Windows Home Server makes no reference to traditional hard drive letters – you simply have a poll of storage available to store data on, spread across whatever hardware you throw at WHS – internal hard drives, or external.
This How To… will focus on the relatively simple task of adding an external USB hard drive to Windows Home Server’s storage pool. For this task, we’re going to use a new Western Digital 250 Gb “My Book” USB Hard Drive.
Say hello!
So, let’s get started.
Step 1: Checking Your Existing Storage
Firstly, log into the Windows Home Server Console on one of your home computers, and select the Server Storage tab at the top of the console. Here’s mine.
As you can see, I already have 2 500Gb internal hard drives installed in my server, but you know, you never can have too much storage available!!
Step 2: Unpack your External Hard Drive, Plug in the Power Cable and Attach the USB Cable to your Home Server
Here’s my drive sitting up above the server. Hey, they look a little like cousins.
(Okay, I’ll admit it’s a little untidy – in a couple of weeks time, we’re starting on house renovations which will include Ethernet throughout and a new home for my home server and router underneath the stairs. That carpet’s from the previous house owners and will be the first thing to go too 
)
Step 3: Check Your Windows Home Server Console
You should now be able to see your new drive listed in the Server Storage tab of the Windows Home Server Console, under Non Storage Hard Drives.
There’s my new hard drive listed at the top. But wait! You’re not done yet. Windows Home Server knows it’s there, but it won’t utilise the drive until you “Add” it to the storage pool and the drive is formatted. So let’s do that now.
Step 4: Click on the External Hard Drive to Highlight It and Select Add
The Add a Hard Drive Wizard will pop up. Click Next.
Step 5: Format the New Hard Drive
Windows Home Server needs to format the new hard drive before using it.
Note: if you are using an old hard drive with existing data on it, it will be deleted at this point. If you wish to keep the data on the drive, cancel the wizard at this point, and back up the data before proceeding.
Click Finish to format the drive and complete the wizard.
Formatting….. (now’s not a good time to remember the only copy of your wedding photos were on that drive).
Format complete. And yes, I too would love to know what happened to the missing 18Gb of my so-called 250Gb hard drive.
Step 6: Check the Server Storage Page in the Windows Home Server Console
There we go, all complete. Windows Home Server has recognised the External Hard Drive and has added it into the storage pool. Job done!
12. December 2007 at 11:32 am
If the added drive contains data that I would like to move to the (existing) storage pool before the added drive is formattet and added to the pool, is that possible?
6. January 2008 at 3:47 am
Any answer to Fab’s question?
Thanks
6. January 2008 at 9:05 am
Whoops – missed this one. If you have any data on the drive you’re adding to the pool that you wish to keep, you must copy this to another drive (outside of the WHS Console), as the drive will be completely formatted.
Terry
21. March 2008 at 3:31 pm
Ok. I’ve got my WHS set up. I’ve added a 2.0 USB 1TB external drive to my WHS (a pc i made into a WHS). Now I’m wondering how i control which drive my backups will go on (or can I?). I’d prefer to have everything backed up to my external USB hard drive, rather than part backed up on my 100gb internal drive and the balance spilling over onto the 1TB usb drive. Is this possible? I can’t find any options for changing my “default” backup location to a specific drive. Help???
21. March 2008 at 3:37 pm
Sorry Ron, WHS controls where your backups will be stored….
Terry
7. May 2008 at 2:12 am
i have a my book external usb 1TB added to my WHS and my shared folders are in my 80gb internal and when i add files to it they wont spill over onto my external and i cant find it to move my server shared folders onto it
26. May 2008 at 4:44 pm
Something to watch on Tranquil servers: the bios is configured to boot first from available USB drives, I gather to support their recovery systems, so when you install a USB hard drive, it will try booting from that drive whenever the server is restarted and it just hangs. This is a real headache if you have automatic updates configured.
These are headless servers so what do you do? Tranquil support indicates the plastic covers on the video ports cover a real video port, not just a blank connector, so you can connect a keyboard and monitor to configure the bios. I haven’t done this yet, and in the mean time I just unplug my USB drive after any server reboot (when it is hung on restart), restart the server with the power switch, and plug the USB drive back in after I can hear the system booting off the internal drive.
21. July 2008 at 2:24 pm
i just installed 3 usb 2.0 my book 1 TB external drives to my whs but i only can add 2 of them to the pool. The third one is not recognizes in the console. Anyone any idea if i can manually add this drive to the pool?
28. November 2008 at 8:03 pm
@FAB – Yes you just use windows explorer and go to your external hard drive and highlight the drives contents and copy it over to the drives that are already added. When its done copying everything over go back and let it format it and add it. Your data will already be on the drives that were in there before you started
14. March 2009 at 9:44 pm
@Peter – Did you figure out how to resolve your issue? I’m confronted with the same problem. I have two USB HDDs added, and I’m trying to add a third but it isn’t recognized.
11. June 2009 at 2:23 pm
I just purchased a 1TB Maxtor 1 touch and attempted to add it to the storage pool but it want to use it exclusively for serer backups. I want to use it for storage, how do you fix this?
11. June 2009 at 8:28 pm
There should be a dialog when you add the USB drive to Windows Home Server asking you if you want to add the drive to the pool or use it for backups. That's where you select what you need…