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Investigating Problems with Disks
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Topic starter
Background-
I have an OWC Thunderbolt Mini enclosure with 4 2Tb drives which I have used for several years without any issues, I decided I wanted to repurpose the device and change it from 2 volumes to a single volume. I had many issues, mainly because one of the volumes had been a Time Machine backup location.
in the end I moved the enclosure to another Mac and reformatted the drives in Apple format, moved it back to my Mac mini, Initialised the drives and setup a single volume.
HOWEVER, I had not firmly pushed home the power cable and part way through creating the new volume the enclosure lost power which seemed to corrupt the new volume!
Not a problem I thought, I would just start the process again.
So moved enclosure back toe my MacBook Air, reformer drives again na done more moved the enclosure back to my Mac mini.
Now however, despite the drives appearing as Apple formatted and never having been used in tehis format on my Mac mini, I cannot get any of them to Initialise!
I get a SoftRAID error, "this device is in use by another application".
HELP PLEASE, I am going around in circles and despite three emails to SoftRAID support email have had no response from them!
I am completely baffled.
Robin
Posted : 04/12/2021 3:34 am
If SoftRAID is telling you the volume is busy (and you are running 6.2), then Time machine is hanging onto the volume.
I assume you tried manually unmounting the volume first?
A workaround if you are stuck is remove all drives not associated with this volume (just pull them out slightly from the enclosure)
Now, uninstall SoftRAID driver, restart.
Run Disk Utility and erase them (choosing HFS is best) (Do not let them be used as Time Machine when asked)
Run SoftRAID, install the driver, "Allow" OWC and restart.
Now you can erase them with SoftRAID.
Posted : 04/12/2021 2:46 pm
Topic starter
Hi
I think you may have missed part of my message.
The drives are not part of a volume and the drives are already Apple formatted on another Mac.
In Softraid they are showing as individual HFS formatted drives, not associated with any kind of volume.
This worked the first time and I was able to initialise them with SoftRAID and start to build a volume until the enclosure lost power.
So I moved them to anther computer again and reformatted the drives again in Apple format (HFS) but now they won't initialise in SoftRAID.
Any other ideas please?
Robin
Posted : 04/12/2021 3:01 pm
Manually unmount the volumes first. Make sure you are using 6.2.
If that is not working, delete them from Time Machine.
Posted : 04/12/2021 3:46 pm
Topic starter
They are individual drives and not part of a volume, they cannot be part of a volume until they are initialised by SoftRAID.
they are not part of or associated to Time Machine.
Posted : 04/12/2021 4:24 pm
You need to attach a SoftRAID support file so I can take a look,
Posted : 04/12/2021 9:21 pm
Topic starter
File attached. I tried to attach a screenshot of my SoftRAID window but it won't allow it.
It shows quite clearly that all 4 drives are not associated to a volume and are not initialised by SoftRAID.
Posted : 05/12/2021 2:21 am
Give the SoftRAID app Full Disk Access (System Preferences/Security/Privacy/Full Disk access.
Try again and if it still gives the same error, send another support file.
Posted : 05/12/2021 2:14 pm
Topic starter
Hmmmmm, ALMOST!!!!!
Gave Full Disk Access and then tried to initialise the 4 disks.
The first 2 initialised perfectly, the last 2 did not and came back with the same error!
Now I am totally confused.
New report attached.
REALLY appreciate the help and support.
Robin
Posted : 05/12/2021 3:44 pm
Topic starter
Ahhhh
On a hunch, I used SoftRAID to unmount the last 2 drives, then tried to initialise them from an unmounted state, each one mounted and initialised perfectly.
I now have all 4 done an day new volume created.
Many thanks for the assist, really appreciated especially on a weekend.
Robin
Posted : 05/12/2021 3:48 pm
The SoftRAID driver is loading now, so this should be working easily.
When you manually unmount the volumes (or command e to eject), do they unmount?
If you can unmount them, they should be initializable.
Posted : 05/12/2021 6:07 pm
