Mounting ReadyNAS drives in a virtual NAS for data access and recovery

OK, so something changed with how ReadyNASOS handles a virtual machine since I last tested it's limits, and for the better for those needing to recover data this way.  Although you can only view 6 of them in the GUI, you can use at least up to 12 drives.  I only tested 12, as that will handle drives from any rack-mount unit or one 6-bay and an EDU500.

Yes, if you have a 316 or 516 and an EDU500, you can attach all drives, or images thereof, from both to the VM and all will be recognized (just as you can put them all in a real 12-bay rack-mount unit).  If the main NAS but not the EDA failed and you have an eSATA interface on your PC, you ought to actually be able to use the EDA500 itself to hold those drives, though I have not done so and don't know what physical drive numbers they'll be assigned.

A couple things I didn't mention above: 

The fact that you can't use the VirtualBox console with the OS4.2.31 version isn't a limitation of the VM, it's how RAIDiator works.  Even on a real NAS (like my RN4200V2, which has a VGA port, before I converted to OS6), it never activates the console.  It may be possible to go in via SSH and change this for future boots, but I've not really tried to figure out how.

It also used to be that you could not log in via the console unless SSH had already been enabled.  That's also no longer the case.