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Topic starter
Mac Mini M2 Pro
Sonoma 14.1.2
SoftRaid 7.6.1
OWC Mercury Elite Pro Quad
RAID 1+0
(4) 4TB WD Red NAS Drives
OWC Thunderbolt 4 Cable
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I keep getting i/o errors on one of my drives. Usually happens with a lot of reading/writing or when Validating the entire volume (which it can't complete). I've read in the forums that i/o errors should be investigated but aren't necessarily the result of a drive failure. The odd behavior is that when SoftRaid spits out the error message, the problem drive will no longer blink it's light. The other drives blink, but I am assuming the blinking light should occur regardless of the status of the drive. SoftRaid tells me the light is blinking, but nothing is happening on the enclosure side.
Additionally, the Volume ceases to function after the i/o errors even though it shows only one drive failed (new Finder window to volume shows spinning wheel). I kind of assumed the Volume would continue to function with one drive failure. The problem resolves with a restart, but that usually requires a force/hard restart, and upon restart, SoftRaid says "Finished SMART test on all disks. No disks failed the SMART test." I have not received any "drive predicted to fail" warning. I also suspect the i/o errors aren't being recorded due to the hard restarts. The computer restarts fine if there are no errors. It also takes a while for the volume to change to an error message (see attached screenshot).
Is there a way to tell if the enclosure is the problem before replacing the drive? I have a new drive, but would rather not open/put it in if I don't have to.
Here's the Log message.
"SoftRAID Driver: A disk (disk11, SoftRAID ID: 07D5E17B0CF3AF40) for the SoftRAID volume "Data Drive" (disk12) encountered multiple read or write errors. This disk has been marked "failed" and will no longer be used for when reading volume data."
Thanks
Posted : 30/12/2023 3:02 pm
Topic starter
I'll also add that when I tried to "Remove Disk" for the drive having issues, SoftRaid crashes and tells me to restart. Log shows "SoftRAID Application: Tool terminating - status = 0, reason = NSTaskTerminationReasonExit", and it doesn't remove the drive.
Posted : 30/12/2023 4:59 pm
This means the volume could not be unmounted by SoftRAID.
Unmount this any any other SoftRAID volumes manually, then try again.
Posted : 30/12/2023 8:36 pm
Also, attaching SoftRAID support files, I can check what I think of the drives reliability. But frequent IO errors are a bad sign. YOu can swap positions of the drive in the enclosure and if the errors follow the drive, that is more evidence it is the disk, not the enclosure.
We cannot support SMART over USB at present. So maybe also try "DriveDx" and see if it can detect SMART. See if the drive has reallocated sectors. We do not think power cycles, or anything directly links to predicted failures, but any reallocated sectors, pending, failed, etc reallocations are certain signs of impending failure.
Posted : 30/12/2023 8:45 pm
Topic starter
Thanks. Just wanted to follow up. Eventually I was able to us the "Remove Disk" command without SoftRaid crashing, but it did then hang on that command. I ended up removing the bad drive and am currently certifying it. It's been going for about two days now, but no errors. Still curious to me that the light for the bad drive wouldn't blink, but I guess the drive wasn't letting anything through.
Posted : 01/01/2024 9:35 pm
