[Sticky] Running Big Sur (beta) on Intel Macs

Run System Preferences and go to extensions. Sort by developer.

See if you can find some of the old extensions and delete them.

Then run this in terminal to reset the kext cache:

sudo kmutil clear-staging

followed by:

sudo kextcache -i /

Then reinstall SoftRAID driver. The key to look for is the - in Disk Identifier.

@rrg I finally got mine working. 

I cleaned the l/e folder. Rebooted and turned off SIP and set security policy to reduced. Rebooted with no drives attached. Then redownloaded b46, copied to Applications. Before opened I went to system settings security and gave the app full disk access. Then opened the app and got a prompt to install driver. Which I did. Rebooted. Then checked to make sure no additional prompts to allow additional developers (which I had previously checked). Checked l/e folder and had the softraid driver and 4 owc kexts/plug-ins.  I ran the terminal command to see if kext loaded and it had not. I manually loaded it. Waited a min then reran the check to see if it loaded. It finally showed. Then I connected my drives and they finally mounted. I did have to format one volume From raid 0+1 or raid 0 as the former has issues on M1. Other is a Raid5. 

Today I launched SoftRAID 5.8.4 on macOS Big Sur (11.0.1) to check the status of my disks (they were working fine but I wanted to check anyway). I got the error about some internal component stopped working so I Googled the error and found a thread here that suggested to install the SoftRAID 6 Beta.

After installing it, the driver wouldn't load so I followed the steps here and cleaned out /Library/Extensions and managed to get the approve system extensions dialog to appear. I approved it, then went into System Preferences > Security & Privacy and clicked the button for more details, then approved software updates from the developers (OWC was listed).

I restarted my Mac and checked the output of kextstat and can see 3 extensions loaded but not the SoftRAID kext:

com.owc.driver.SATA-Command (8.1.0b16)
com.owc.driver.SCSI-Device0E (1.1.0b16)
com.owc.driver.SCSI-Device (1.1.0b16)

When I launch the SoftRAID utility, I can see my disks but they are not mounted. I tried to right click and choose mount but it doesn't work. The UI shows a loading bar next to the disk but after a few seconds it disappears and still shows unmounted.

I tried to give SoftRAID full disk access and restarted multiple times. SIP is disabled and the 5.8.4 kext was working for me but I am not able to reinstall it.

I tried the above steps but I am unable to get the SoftRAID driver to load. I also tried manually but it also failed:

sudo kextload -v /Library/Extensions/SoftRAID.kext
Executing: /usr/bin/kmutil load -p /Library/Extensions/SoftRAID.kext
Error occurred while building a collection:
1: One or more binaries has an error which prevented linking. See other errors.
2: Could not use 'com.softraid.driver.SoftRAID' because: Failed to bind '__ZN18IOMemoryDescriptor16setPreparationIDEv' in 'com.softraid.driver.SoftRAID' (at offset 0x2b456 in __TEXT, __text) as could not find a kext which exports this symbol
com.softraid.driver.SoftRAID specific:
1: Failed to bind '__ZN18IOMemoryDescriptor16setPreparationIDEv' in 'com.softraid.driver.SoftRAID' (at offset 0x2b456 in __TEXT, __text) as could not find a kext which exports this symbol

Is there an ETA on a fix for this problem?

@mushbuddygoose Thanks for the suggestions. Unfortunately I couldn't get this to work. I did explicitly grant Full Disk Access to the app (which it didn't have previously) but the driver installation attempt still fails in the same way.

If I can't resolve this soon I'm going to have to revert to Catalina until there's a workable solution.

Try going back to the B43 driver:

http://softraid.com/updates/SoftRAID%206.0.1%20b43.dmg

Some users are getting issues with B46, which I need to investigate. The easy way to tell if the driver is not installing is if there is a - next to Disk Identifier in the volumes tile for your SoftRAID volume, rather than "disk5:" or similar. If there is a disk number, then it should mount and may need directory repair (Disk Warrior)

Try deleting all your extensions in /Library/Extensions

Uninstall SoftRAID driver.

go to  the Extensions folder and note what is there. Copy them to your desktop.

Now delete them all.

run this command in the terminal.app:

sudo kmutil clear-staging

followed by:

sudo kextcache -i /

Now restart and run SoftRAID and install the driver. Make sure you allow OWC as an identified developer when/if prompted.

Let me know.

(You may need to reinstall some extensions, I know, this is a quick test to see if you have an obsolete driver that is blocking SoftRAID)

@softraid-support Still no go. I've tried this several times but the driver installation still fails as previously described.

@softraid-support yes, I reset the error counter each time, so it is a new error upon every reboot.

@softraid-support I finally got the driver to load by using the b43 beta!

I then tried running b46 again but, as before, that just removed the existing driver and failed when it tried to install the new one. So, b43 it is.

No matter. I have a working solution and I'll wait for a newer beta before trying to upgrade again.

@superjerm Did you try to manually load it? Mine would not load on its own. I manually loaded it. Once I did, I connected my MEPQ and finally mounted. Subsequent restarts and no need to manually load it.

i will check it and further share my review

You can manually load it with this command in terminal:

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

I have tried to respond to all posts in this thread, but may have missed someone in all the posts. If you did not get an expected response, please post and let me know!

@softraid-support When I run b46 it removes the SoftRAID.kext that's already there (from b43) and doesn't replace it, so there's nothing to kextload.

Should I look for the SoftRAID.kext in the b46 bundle and copy that into /Library/Extensions manually? And if I do that, will it be loaded properly when the system boots?

@rrg

You can try it and report back, but if you run b43, we will get a version out that fixes this as soon as we can.