Unable to add new drives during certification process - Functionality Issues

RE: Unable to add new drives during certification process

SoftRAID Support — Fri, 01 Sep 2023 16:24:59 +0000

@thatprivacyguy

I will test this to be certain.

We do not track certified disks after you quit/relaunch SoftRAID. there is nothing on the disks to "remember". I guess its possible to keep a database/list of certified drives, but I am not sure of the point. After certification, drives are initailzed and put into service. Potentially giving info on a disk "certified on...", but that is a lot of coding for not much value to most users.

RE: Unable to add new drives during certification process

ThatPrivacyGuy — Fri, 01 Sep 2023 10:01:52 +0000

@softraid-support It certainly seems to be either an issue with the softRAID beta (on Sonoma) or the OWC Thunderbay 8 Flex SATA controller card - because once the certification finished, I re-inserted the new drives and they were recognised and appeared in softRAID UI (I tried re-inserting them several times whilst the other drives were being certified and they simply never appeared).

Given SoftRAID is developed by OWC it would make sense for you guys to grab a Thunderbay 8 Flex (I presume you have access to them?) and test this yourself to verify the issue.

I have also discovered an additional issue. Even though the other drives successfully completed certification and initially showed they were certified in the SoftRAID UI, since I closed SoftRAID and powered down the Thunderbay 8 Flex (for troubleshooting the drive issue) these drives are no longer showing they are certified.

RE: Unable to add new drives during certification process

SoftRAID Support — Wed, 30 Aug 2023 16:44:21 +0000

@thatprivacyguy

If they are not showing up at all, then it is a hardware issue, 100% unrelated to your certify. You can cancel the certify to test this and try different things with the drives. Then when you restart the certify on those drives, SoftRAID will pick up where it left off, as long as you do not change any certify settings.

Thunderbolt is "hot swappable", meaning what you do on one slot will not affect other slots, so you can insert new drives, etc.

RE: Unable to add new drives during certification process

ThatPrivacyGuy — Wed, 30 Aug 2023 15:55:11 +0000

@softraid-support nope - it is only showing the disks which were attached prior to starting certification which would suggest that either the driver is not picking up the new drives when they are attached to the controller on the Thunderbay 8 Flex during an existing certification process. i would be incredibly surprised to find that 2 out of 2 new drives are broken to the point where they cannot be detected - the chances of that happening are incredibly low.

I should add I am on Sonoma using the latest beta of SoftRAID and this is in an M1 Mac Studio Ultra 128GB.

RE: Unable to add new drives during certification process

SoftRAID Support — Wed, 30 Aug 2023 14:27:19 +0000

Yes SoftRAID should see the drives.

If you run in terminal.app, diskutil list

does it show the new drives?

Unable to add new drives during certification process

ThatPrivacyGuy — Wed, 30 Aug 2023 09:08:03 +0000

I recently purchased the Thunderbay 8 Flex and put in 2x 16TB IronWolf Pro drives and started the certification process. That process showed 141 hours for completion (per drive) and now has about 30 hours left. During the last couple of days I had more 16TB IronWolf Pro drives arrive and have added them to the Thunderbay 8 Flex however, they have not been detected by SoftRAID (presumably because it is still certifying the other two disks) - this means that instead of being able to add the disks and begin the *very long* certification process, I actually have to wait for the existing certification jobs to finish - this adds a huge inconvenience and delay to getting the Thunderbay 8 Flex setup and usable.

If I try to close SoftRAID in order to re-open it to see if the drives are found - I get a warning that the current certification process will abort, so after over 100 hours I don't want to do that. But this is an important issue as if the drives I just had arrive are faulty - the long certification process and inability to install and certify new drives could potentially take me over the limit for returning the drives under EU law (we have a law known as distance selling regulations which requires online retailers to accept returns within 14 days for any reason - this make returns much simpler than having to go through an RMA process). Given one of my new drives has a significant dent in the housing I really want to ensure it has not been damaged and I am being significantly delayed from doing that.

Is SoftRAID supposed to detect new drives whilst doing a certification or is this issue by design?