RAID 5 disappeared, softraid wouldn't mount it - Functionality Issues

RE: RAID 5 disappeared, softraid wouldn't mount it

dayjob — Sat, 14 Jan 2023 17:17:38 +0000

@softraid-support i've already gone back to apple disk utility and 2 sets of mirrored volumes instead of raid 5/softraid. sorry. not going to set it up again as raid5 via softraid and generate errors and logs. i'd like to be supportive and provide feedback so the issue could be potentially fixed but i don't have time to beta test software with my data at risk. i'll take the L and move on until one day i buy another reliable hardware RAID enclosure like the other 4 drive bay i have from OWC that has never had a single hiccup. i like to sleep well at night and won't if i'm worried my softraid/raid5 set up is going to randomly crap the bed.

RE: RAID 5 disappeared, softraid wouldn't mount it

SoftRAID Support — Sat, 14 Jan 2023 10:39:39 +0000

@dayjob

Sorry to hear about this. Any chance you saved the kernel panic for this event? Or if you can repeat, I would love to see a panic log, and a SoftRAID tech support file.

Please save a SoftRAID Technical support file (Utilities menu) with all disks connected and attach it to your response

Next time the system panics, on restart, there is a "Report to Apple" option. click that then "details." Copy and paste that text into a text edit file and send that to me. You need to "Make Plain text" In Text Edit, so it is actually a text file, so you can attach it here.

RAID 5 disappeared, softraid wouldn't mount it

dayjob — Sat, 14 Jan 2023 03:38:34 +0000

this is a recent-ish set up for me. I previously had it set up as two sets of mirrored drives but needed more space so set up it as RAID 5. it's a thunderbay. apple silicon, Monterey 12.6

the volume vanished and i couldn't mount it. Softraid 7 (latest version) saw the volume and drives w/no errors but wouldn't mount. Tried to find info here and hoped that little terminal hack would mount the volume but no luck.

So, i re-initialized and recreated the RAID 5 volume (64k stripe to prevent kernel panics) . I had everything on that volume backed up on a spare USB drive so was no loss of data. I dragged it all back over to the new recreated volume and thought i was in the clear but a minute or two into copying the data i got a kernel panic and pink screen and then black then restart. The volume was still there and i tried to finish copying but got same result.

I have no time for this nonsense and I'm glad i had all the data back up. My plan is to create the old set up using disk utility and forget about the much more safe RAID 5 w/parity and just do 2 mirrored RAID sets and back up to the USB drive as well once in a while.

the older 4 drive enclosure i have from OWC has hardware RAID so no need for Softraid. knock wood it's always been solid as has the little 2 disk enclosure i also have hooked up that has my music library on it.

the combo of softraid and thunderbay leaves me a bit cold. not willing to trust it with all my works in progress projects which is what I intended it for with RAID 5.

shrug.