[Sticky] Important notes regarding Big Sur and SoftRAID

Okay, I understand the SoftRAID UI may be beta for a while, and that the 6.0 driver is "built-in" to 11.0.1, but my question is whether my 24tb (4x8tb HDD) SoftRAID RAID5 array will work in in the new OS?  Apple's implementation of SoftRAID is limited to RAID0 or RAID1.

I have a OWC thunderbay 4, with SoftRaid XT. I installed Big Sur without the external drive connected. After the install, I shut down connected the drive and restart, I open Softraid XT 5.8.4  and I got this

but the file seems accessible 

5.8.4 is not compatible with Big Sur. We will be doing public beta's until 6.0 is ready.

here is the link to the beta: ​​​​​​​SoftRAID 6

@mangombia

Absolutely will work. SoftRAID has no current limits for disk sizes. So as long as your hardware is good, SoftRAID is good.

@softraid-support  I removed the %3E  from  https://www.softraid.com/sr_beta and now the link work 

I will install now , thank you 

@softraid-support,

I came here after getting an error message when trying to open SoftRAID 5.8.4 with Big Sur, so I quit as instructed, and installed the SoftRAID 6 Beta from the link in this forum.  However, once I did that my ThunderBay will not mount.  It shows up on the SoftRAID window as "unmounted."  Tried uninstalling and going back to 5.8.4, but no joy yet.  Please advise anything I can try.

Thanks!

Attach a SoftRAID tech support file so i can take a look.

@softraid-support

James Mathers tech support report attached.

Thanks!

@softraid-support. 

I tried re-installing SoftRAID a few more times, poking around the privacy settings, and re-installed Big Sur.  Still the same -- it looks like the driver/extension is good to load but for some reason it isn't, or for another reason the RAID volume fails to mount. I'll  be away from my computer for a few days and will see if there are updates to try when I'm back later this month.   I'll let you know if I haven't found a resolution by then, and will share the support file so we can dig in deeper.

Thanks again for your help.

@sterno

Try this terminal command and let me know what the result is:

sudo kextload -v 6 /Library/Extensions/SoftRAID.kext

Do you have any other computer to connect these drives to and see if your volume mounts?

I seem to have a similar issue. Installed b42 on a laptop (2018 13" MBP) with Big Sur 20B29. The volumes are recognised in Soft Raid and DiskUtility, but I can't mount. I tested this with ThunderBlade 8GB (Raid0). 

I'm in the 'luxury' to validate this before I would upgrade other systems. Is there something we can do to test (log file location, debug enabling, ...)

@softraid-support - I'm running the Beta, but my Raid icon has disappeared.  What can I do.  Thank you for any suggestion.  I assume this is sufficient until the Big Sur version is released?

Agreed!!  I'm not that savvy when it comes to this kind of stuff but I knew enough to get myself set up to use a raid and to make it work because I felt it was needed - I was starting to accumulate volumes of 4K files and they were getting harder to manage on singular drives which were starting to gather all over my house!!  I set up this Raid to help manage this problem, but it looks like my biggest problem is that I upgraded tooooooooooo soon to Big Sur believing Softraid would be ready for the change.  Now I'm running a beta version of which I'm using with no confidence, the forum is woefully inadequate in terms of advice I need to have confidence that "something is eminent".

I'm feeling pretty left out in the cold here

And, to top it off my Raid icon has disappeared on my desktop after installing the Beta leaving only the text to click on .... God help me!!

Can anyone talk me down from the ledge?

Thanks

P.S.  Im not trying to be an alarmist, but there seems to be a lack of leadership here regarding this problem.

The Thunderbay4 opens up on my laptop with SoftRAID v5.7 running OS 10.15.7.  I will obviously hold off on upgrading to BigSur, but really need access via my desktop to get back to editing.

Thanks,
James Mathers