Expanding the RAID 5 group beyond the 6 hard drives

Question

I'm trying to expand my RAID 5 group beyond the 6 hard drives using an external hard drive cage connected by eSATA and all I can get is this message...

expand for raid 50 or raid 60 requires the selected disks to be divisible by the number of raid groups

I have a 316 ReadyNas that I expanded beyond the 6 hard drives to now 9 last year with ZERO problems.

Why can I not do the same with the 516???

NathanWoodruff · Answer

This is the error

NathanWoodruff · Answer

And the the ReadyNas 316 had no problem with it.

StephenB · Answer

NathanWoodruff&nbsp;wrote:
And the the ReadyNas 316 had no problem with it.

Not something I'd recommend myself, as the eSATA port has poor performance, and any issues with cabling will result in either resync or volume failure.
&nbsp;
Did you choose RAID-50 or RAID-60 on the RN316?

Sandshark · Answer

I think you are just getting the wrong error message.&nbsp; I've seen a lot of that in more recent ReadyNASOS versions.&nbsp; The real message should be telling you that's not allowed.&nbsp; It's also a very bad idea.&nbsp; Your eSATA box is using port replication and is limited to SATAII.&nbsp; So, it's sending data for multiple drives through an outdated port designed for one.&nbsp; In other eSATA configurations, you'd only be using one drive at a time, so it's not as noticeable.&nbsp; But in RAID, it slows things down a lot, most especially with large file transfers, RAID sync, Balance, and Scrub.&nbsp; Even one drive in a RAID that's in an eSATA enclosure would, at best, slow down the whole unit and at worst would result in a corrupt volume because the drives in the external chassis can't keep up.&nbsp;Then there is the vulnerability of the connector, which is a poor choice IMHO (it needs positive latching).&nbsp; If it came loose, that could also corrupt the whole volume.&nbsp;So the OS only lets you create a new volume in the external chassis, not expand into one.&nbsp; While documentation for XRAID usually says you can only have one volume in XRAID, that's not completely true.&nbsp; You can't have two in the same physical chassis.&nbsp; So you don't have to disable XRAID.&nbsp;Note that the external volume can still be at risk if the eSATA plug comes loose (I lost a volume twice due to that), and that access to it is going to be significantly slower.&nbsp; So, choose wisely which data you move to the volume on the external chassis.

StephenB · Answer

Sandshark&nbsp;wrote:
I think you are just getting the wrong error message.

NathanWoodruff:&nbsp; Could be, but I am wondering if you selected the wrong option.&nbsp; What should have been done (in flexraid) was to create a RAID-5 group for the disks in the enclosure, and then concatenate it with the groups in the existing volume.&nbsp;&nbsp;
&nbsp;
Sandshark&nbsp;wrote:
It's also a very bad idea.&nbsp;

Totally agree.&nbsp; A much better approach is to create two volumes - especially here, when the disks are already massive.&nbsp;

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Expanding the RAID 5 group beyond the 6 hard drives

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