Can you use NAS/laptop/desktop drives? Maybe. There is no guarantee. Some drives may not show up on the controller at all. Some may show up but can't be configured. Some may show up and be configurable but fail randomly later. They simply aren't programmed to respond to the controller like the controller expects, so whether they work or not will be hit and miss and you would just need to try it, assuming that roadbumps you encounter are a result of the drives not being the proper drives for the server.
Hello Everyone! I Have Posted before about an issue I had with my Poweredge R710 Server that I had issues with related to the HDD's. Anyway I was installing Windows Server 2012 and was able to see the 2TB Raid 0 HDD but when I attempted to install it said "We Couldn't Locate An Existing Or Create A New Partition".   If you have any experiences similar to this or know how to fix this any form of help would be great.   I plan to boot this from a USB flash drive (or low cap. SSD with a laptop DVD to SATA adapter) and if I am able to install on another device and load drivers for the raid card (SAS card, SATA Backplane) onto win server 2012 so that it can access the storage I have.   Thank You
Win Server Can See HDD's But Can't Install Onto Them