Upgrading Mac OS Suggestions Please

You may get differing opinions.

I have a 2014 Mini as a desktop/Server. My preferences was to keep High Sierra on it, but I installed both an SSD and NVMe and Mojave was required to see the NVMe drive. Seems to work fine. There are a couple minor issues with WiFI and VPN's, but it has been working well, performing well.

Both Catalina and Big Sur seem problematic, so my next home server OS will likely be 12.whatever.

Note: the risk in older OS's are exploits.

An up to date OS is the best anti-virus/anto exploit protection you can have. Just as a reminder. If you stay with an older OS, take extra precautions for data/server safety.

Hello,

Can I ask for an update on recommendations? I'd love to hear a brief summary of current issues with Big Sur.

Still running Yosemite on 2014 imac 5k. So no M1, no T2 security chip, no APFS volumes, no softraid boot volumes (I just use raid 5 file storage). Monterrey will not be compatible. Debating between Mojave or Big Sur. I see the good point above about security with older OS.

Reading through Softraid guidance I see things like being unable to "Allow" Softraid as an identified developer and issues loading the driver (mention of having to input a terminal command after every reboot?). Disabling Secureboot. Some issues only with certain macs like M1 or T2 security chip etc.

Would really appreciate a quick roundup in my case.

Still running Softraid 5.8.4 but know I'd have to upgrade to 6 for Big Sur.

Thanks so much, really appreciate the help! Cheers.

MacOS has left layers of obstacles for just loading drivers in the past few years.

With 6.0, you can run Mohave without any issues, except two:

Must "Allow" OWC as an identified developer. this is true of all kernel extensions now, they are blocked until specifically allowed in macOS

With 5.8.4 you need to disable Secure Boot, on both Mojave and catalina.

With Catalina, you need to disable Secure Boot regardless.

Big Sur removed that restriction, but a bug in Big Sur means that the SoftRAID driver (and other third party drivers) may not auto load at startup. We added a preference in 6.1 (coming) to hopefully address this.

Hope this helps.

Big Sur is a pretty poor macOS version comparatively, and while Monterey appears like it will fix most of the issues, I understand it won't run on your machine. Maybe Mohave is best for you, perhaps Catalina.

Posted by: @softraid-support

With 6.0, you can run Mohave without any issues, except two:

Must "Allow" OWC as an identified developer. this is true of all kernel extensions now, they are blocked until specifically allowed in macOS

With 5.8.4 you need to disable Secure Boot, on both Mojave and catalina.

Thanks so much for the info.

To clarify above - you say 2 issues with 6.0 and Mohave but mention 1 specifically with 6 (allow OWC as identified developer, a very simple one-time thing I believe?). Then say with 5.8.4 I'd need to disable Secure Boot.

Is there a second issue if I upgrade to Softraid 6?

If I upgrade to 6, would I not need to disable Secure Boot in Mohave??

I'm happy to upgrade to 6 if need be and figured I would at some point. I just hesitate to upgrade things when they work well!

Really appreciate the quick reply and guidance. Cheers,

Chris

@bermie

with 6.0 you do not need to disable Secure Boot, correct.

From now on, all MacOS released must enable third party developers.

There should be no issues for you, however, with 6.0 and Mohave. SoftRAID will essentially behave the same with 5.x as 6.0, with the Secure Boot being the main difference.