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

@softraid-support that worked! Now I have 30 days left in the b43 trial. Hope this regression gets fixed soon.

Note: the b47 we just released was only for a critical M1 issue. it does not address whatever is happening to intel machines. We are working on this issue.

@softraid-support perhaps as I am not running the soft raid monitor on startup because it was causing my mac to crash for the past few versions of macOs maybe due to the bugs the OS had with external thunderbolt drives?  should i re-enable the monitor on startup?

I ran SoftRaid manually and check for updates and installed the new update.  Interesting is it did not require a system reboot after installing the new driver, is this expected now?  it used to require restart.

Attach a SoftRAID tech support file, and I can check your status and make a recommendation.

@softraid-support ok so i re-enabled the monitor on startup and rebooted my mac.  all good but then i left my computer to take a walk and upon returning awoke it from sleep and was greeted by the ol' Drive Locked Error dialog which was why I originally stopped loading the monitor, here it is... also you see clicking the ? icon brings up a bad URL for help

@softraid-support it is interesting also that though it says there was an error in the monitor all the volumes are still mounted and say no errors.  If I simply refuse to load the monitor it never has a problem and doesn't do these sleep popup errors.

@softraid-support I purchased an Intel iMac (iMac 19,2) that was clean upgraded to Big Sur. I was using SoftRaid XT (latest release).  I tried the version 6 beta, and now the ThunderRaid won't mount.

@softraid-support I uninstalled B46, and loaded B43, and now the disk mounts properly! SUCCESS!

@rrg

Use the B43 driver for now, we are investigating this issue and may have an idea what is causing it.

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

@dfortney

I think disabling Monitor stops the reporting, not the issue. Disable Monitor for a few days, then send me a new support file, I will look for logged instances of this. (Its possible without Monitor, we may not log this, I am looking into that)

@softraid-support If I disable monitor though I can continue to access all volumes read and write as normal and when i manually launch the monitor it shows them all as good and without error.  The only time the error occurs is upon wake from sleep with monitor running.  I think it might just be a bug in the monitor and not an actual disk failure.

I can use the computer for days without the monitor running and through many sleep cycles with no issue accessing those volumes.  I will run it without the monitor for a few days and update with the logs

Since your log was cleaned out:

How often on average between lock messages when Monitor is enabled?

Are you disabling using the SoftRAID preferences?

Watch the log and see if any lock messages appear.

thanks!

@softraid-support just about every time the computer goes to sleep if its running, maybe every other but enough that it's a real pain.  i didn't see a disable through preferences which to be honest are confusing.  I disable the monitor from loading in the launch agents of the os using the CleanMyMac tool

@dfortney

Doing that you are disabling all reporting and communication with the driver.

Can you try this:

Uncheck all the Monitor boxes. Lets see if you get the alert. (or any log entries)

Also, have you ever had your volumes "write protect" up on you, becoming read only?

@softraid-support no they have never become read only. without the monitoring running i have been using softraid driver alone now for past 6 mos or longer and no obvious data or actual file access issues.  it really does seem like this error is just a monitor bug and not actually a driver to volume issue.  I think I had tried unchecking all the monitor boxes and it still did it but I will try again. Like this? With the status one unchecked i can't tell if it is running or not when I minimize and quit the icon in the dock.