I have 6 drives in a 316 configured as RAID5. When I inserted the 6th drive and it added to the RAID5 group, the button for X-RAID no longer shows up. I also have a 516 that has 6 drives in it, and I purchased an EDA500 for the 516. Reading documentation I had to turn off X-RAID on the 516 changing it to Flex-Raid to add drives to the RAID5 group in the 516.
I have now purchased an EDA500 for the 316 and want to expand the RAID5 group in the 316 to the EDA500 I purchased for it. But my only option for the 316 is make it a Global Spare.
How do I get the X-RAID button back on the 316 to disable X-RAID and revert to Flex-Raid to expand the raid group to the EDA500?
You are adding the drives in the EDA500 to the volume in the main chassis? That's a very bad idea, and isn't even supposed to be possible. The eSATA interface of the EDA500 is slow and somewhat unreliable, and expanding your main volume to it would slow things down immensely. And if your eSATA ever comes loose while power is on, you can lose your whole volume.
The best way to use an EDA500 is to leave XRAID on and create a separate volume in it. While you'll see some documentation saying you can't have two volumes with XRAID, you can with an EDA500. You can't have two volumes in the same chassis. Or at least that was the case back when I had two connected to a 516, which was a couple main OS revisions back.
I don't know why you lost your XRAID button, but the OS is operating properly when it disallows you adding a drive in the EDA to your main volume.
I'm wondering if, with the EDA500 being long EoL, Netgear has continued to test new OS releases with one.
I fixed the problem by shutting down the 316 and rebooting it. The X-Raid button came back and then allowed me to add to the RAID 5 group in the external card cage. I'm attempting to do the same now in the 516 and it is giving me errors.
