SoftRAID 6 (User wishlist)

Here is what we can discuss:

RAID 6 (dual parity disks)
APFS support in SoftRAID volumes
Encrypted APFS volumes

I guess encrypted APFS volumes and RAID-6 are great features.
Worth upgrading.

However I think I would be also happy with Dark Mode.

Dark Mode will be supported.
(although dark mode seems like a short lived fad. Looks cool, but it reduces readability/useability.)

The SoftRAID Easy RAID configuration tool won't allow the installation of SR without a SR disk as of 5.7.3. It would be nice if it would allow it at least in v6.

Also it would be great if Apple and SR could work it out so that RAID volumes are supported for startup. If Apple is unwilling than it would still be great to have the ability with SR even if it delays new releases or is a separate install module that lags the core version.

The first request seems like a bug, which I will invesigate. the Easy Setup in version 6 will be improved.

Booting is something Apple is preventing because of kernel security concerns. They want to lock down the startup process, and the security group has control over this. So it is unlikely that we will be able to bypass this startup issue, but we will keep looking.

thanks!

Dark Mode will be supported.
(although dark mode seems like a short lived fad. Looks cool, but it reduces readability/useability.)

As someone who has worked in a dark studio the past 20+ years, where ALL professional studio applications have always had "dark mode" (and still do), it's not going away anytime soon :) Perhaps mainstream will even out to 50/50 - even Microsoft is offering dark mode, and a brighter light mode.

In fact, "dark mode" causes far less eye strain in a darkened environment, where most media professionals and nerds/geeks like me spend most of their time. My eyes don't burn nearly as much when staying up very late at night.

I've used apps/plugins wherever I can for many years for that very reason, and still use the dark mode plugin in Safari, so I don't get blinded by white web pages (like this one).

While it "looks cool", it also has a practical application. Being a v6 beta tester, I like the progress so far, but agree with your readability assessment - due to your logo's already dark colors, readability is poor - the logo needs brightening in dark mode (but looks great on a very dark background on this website with Safari's dark mode plugin), or the background needs further darkening.

Thanks for the feedback!

I haven't used Dark Mode untill now – but I can assure anyone spending a lot of time in front of modern LED display – this is really great feature. Most of my friends simply didn't have any idea about this feature on new MacOS. Not everyone studies new system features release info.

Full APFS support would be great. Also, fixing the alternate SMTP email notification would be nice ;-)

Yes, we will.

APFS is being worked on currently in the 6.x beta.

We also intend to fix all the bugs in email notification for version 6.

Hi! I hope I'm not too late to the party but I created an account to say that since OWC has started selling 6-bay enclosures, I would definitely be interested in some kind of RAID 6 implementation.

I went through my first drive failure recently (in a NAS box, completely unrelated to my OWC/Softraid setup) and I felt REALLY vulnerable waiting for a RAID 5 to rebuild itself after a drive failed.

We definitely will have a RAID 6 style (dual parity) implementation in SoftRAID 6.

thanks!

Is there any ETA on Raid 6 support?

Not sure how much longer I can hold out before building my 8 bay raid.

Thank you - and keep up the good work

We definitely will have a RAID 6 style (dual parity) implementation in SoftRAID 6.

thanks!

We do not have an ETA yet, but are working hard. We notice that while early Catalina builds worked perfect with 5.7.5, some issues are developing with later builds, so that could give us a deadline.