Using Docks and Third Party Enclosures - SoftRAID Forum

how to safely unmount disk and turn off external enclosures

calbear88 — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 20:06:16 +0000

Hi, I have two thunderbolt-2 drive enclosures, a AKiTiO Thunder2 Quad SATA Storage Enclosure, and a OWC ThunderBay IV 4-Bay enclosure.

I was wondering what would be the safe way to turn off the enclosures. I considered using the dock ejector software, but that also ejects attached USB drives as well that I want to remain connected.

If I go to softraid, unmount all the volumes, wait 1 minute and the turn off the enclosures with the physical power switch, is that safe? Or should I shut down the computer first and then turn off the enclosures?

Thanks!

What the maximum performance with Sonnets Echo III Desktop + Sonnet M.2 4x4 PCIe Card with RAID 4 SoftRAID volume?

howdytom — Fri, 31 May 2024 20:39:22 +0000

Who is using SoftRAID with Sonnet's Echo III Desktop and NVMe SSDs? I am thinking about buying the pricey Sonnet Echo III Desktop. I do have a Sonnet M.2 4x4 PCIe Card (Silent) with 4x Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVME from a MacPro5,1.

What is the maximum performance to expect using a RAID 4 or RAID 1 SoftRAID volume? I stumbled up misleading specs on the performance. According to Sonnet website, it delivers up to 2800 MB/s of PCIe bandwidth. Any reply are highly appreciated.

Moving from a MacPro 5.1 internal to a MBP M3 TB3-Enclosure

Lucius_14 — Tue, 19 Dec 2023 16:57:52 +0000

Hi, I am moving my complete Studio from my MacPro 5.1 to a 2023 MBP M3 Pro.
I have Two SR-Raids running (2TB and 3TB) and I would like to just move these discs from inside my MP to an external Thunderbolt-Enclosure.
I have a clean, new system running on my MBP and my Softraid-license is Lite.
Is it possible to just put the 4 Discs inside one 4-Bay or two 2-Bay-Enclosures or what do I have to do, to migrate theses two Raids?

Shuffling disks within OWC Thunderbay enclosures

brettonw — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 15:37:52 +0000

I have three Thunderbay enclosures that I have used to create Raid5 volumes using 4 drives. One of those enclosures is older, with thunderbolt 2 connector, and I'd like to relocate the 4 drives in that to one of the enclosures with USB-C. Am I able to simply move the drives, and SoftRAID will find them again?

External enclosure died

dgiffin — Mon, 20 Jun 2022 14:03:13 +0000

The external enclosure I am using has died (my guess at the moment is the power supply failed) but I just wanted to check that I can move the disks into a new enclosure and SoftRAID will be fine? Any gotchas I need to be aware of?

OWC Mercury U.2 Pro Dual - Configuration?

member_p — Sat, 28 May 2022 03:15:36 +0000

I just got a U.2 Pro Dual that I plan to use on my Mac Studio (once that arrives). I'm currently setting the U.2 on my MacBook Pro (15", 2016) under Monterey 12.4.

I am planning to have three volumes on the U.2. One will be a 4-TB mirror created from two 4-TB NVMe's. The other two volumes will each be a non-raid volume consisting of one 4-TB NVMe. All volumes will be formatted at APFS.

OWC customer support told me that the position (which of the shuttle or position in the shuttles) of those 4 NVMe's will not make any difference. But some conversations on this board suggest that for full throughput I should place the two mirrored NVMe's in the same position in separate shuttles; and the location of the other two volumes shouldn't make any difference.

Can anyone tell me the best positions for the 4, 4TB NVMe's? Currently, they are all in one shuttle since it was slightly cheaper that way.

Changing disk/RAID enclosure - problems?

ricardogf — Fri, 28 Jan 2022 22:04:15 +0000

Simple question: I have decided to replace my aging LaCie 5Big disk/RAID enclosure (which does not accept SSDs, as I discovered today) with a newer Thunderbay 6 model. As long as the used RAID disks do not change, would I risk losing anything or having to reformat everything if I move them to that new enclosure?

Thanks!

Thunder Bay 12 Tb Enclosure - RAID 5

jhurlbut — Wed, 22 Dec 2021 20:27:41 +0000

I have a Thunder Bay 12 Tb Thunderbolt 3 Enclosure formatted as HFS+ and in a RAID 5 Configuration.

I bought this mostly because my iMac Pro only has a 1Tb Drive so I need to move files off my Mac to the ThunderBay as I run out of disk space. Whenever I try to copy an entire folder I get the error:

"You can't copy "Icon?" because it has the same name as another item on the destination volume, and that volume doesn't distinguish between upper- and lowercase letters in filenames."

1164

If I copy each file individually from the source folder to the destination folder, that all works. It's only when I try to copy an entire folder or a group of folders that I get this error. It copies some of the files, but not all of them, so it's a pain to go back and figure out which files copied and which did not.

Is there another format I should be using for the Array? Also I assume this means I'll need to pull everything off the Thunder Bay Enclosure, reformat it, and then move everything back?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance!

Can SoftRaid Manage a Lgcie Big 5 bay Big Thunder bolt 2 External Array?

CottonJH — Sat, 18 Dec 2021 00:40:13 +0000

Had a disk in Lacie 5Big array Raid 5 reported as failing soon by Softraid, not the Lacie Management software. Replaced affected drive in Lacie enclosure. After this, Lacie RAID Manager software no longer saw the array. Two hours with Lacie troubleshooting and they recommended I try Softraid to either repair of re-stripe and format array. Installed Softraid 14 day demo and hav certifies all 5 disks. When attempting to create new volume per instructions I encounter Volume size selection. What do I enter here? The 5 discs in array are 2TB each.