Expanding my setup - Need Advice

Hi all.

Looking for some help.

I currently have a Dell Optiplex 7010 with four hard drives. A 128gb SSD (split in two partitions for OS and app data), as well as three 6TB NAS drives in a Mergerfs configuration for my storage.

I'm out of space on the storage, and purchased a new 6TB NAS drive to add it to the Mergerfs.

I need to add expansion to get the SATA connections for the new hard drive, but before i do this, I'm wondering if I'm going about this the right way.

I'm planning on moving me OS to a USB stick, and upgrading the SSD to a 1TB one.

I want to plan for the longer-term. I'll probably be adding more drives every year or so.

Any suggestions on what I should do long term? Should I invest in expansion of my Optiplex? Or go for something different in the long term? Unfortunately Im out of budget at the moment after buying the SSD and 6TB NAS drive.
I currently use my server primarily as a media server with dockers for Emby, Sonarr, Radarr and Jackett.

My intention is to use it as an NVR also, as well as using it for Home Assistant. In an ideal world I'd also life to run something like pfsense as a VM.

Any suggestions are welcome.

Quote from mi-hol

what would you use it for?

Seems a quite expensive storage option for a budget NAS.
Also looking at energy consumption a DELL Optiplex doesn't look like the best option for running Home Assistant.

Did you measure energy consumption over a week or so?

Won't just be for downloads, also for running some VMs.

Problem I'm having at the moment is if I want to download big files of 60 GB etc, I just don't have the space.

I've been running the NAS for a while, so it's more a budget upgrade rather than build 😃

I have the 1TB and 6TB drives purchased, so it be any future purchases that will need to be budgeted for.

I haven't used an energy meter on it yet. Will do so and come back to you. Thanks for the advice.