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

@softraid-support

In fact the concern about needing raid-6 reinforces the need for hot spare replacement.  Let me explain...

Why raid-6?   Assume large drives raid 5.  Talking anything 3TB or larger drives in general.  The rebuild time for a single disk failure is long enough that a 2nd failure has statistically significant chance of occurring during the rebuild, leading to data loss.  Hence raid-6 for two failure protection to reduce the probability of data loss.  

By definition, hot spare serves the same purpose.  It reduces the timeframe in which more failures matter by immediately starting a replacement on detection of failure rather than waiting for a user to notice the failure, access the gear, replace a drive, verify the replacement (even if sitting next to the box a verification cycle is needed) and then waiting on the rebuild.  Depending on timing (think late night on a weekend) as many as 24 hours might pass before a rebuild starts.  Even with R-6, that’s a long time as drives get bigger. 

A hot spare could be validated on insertion, monitored through SMART, and periodically even tested through some small random reads and writes to ensure, as best as possible, it’s ready when needed.

Hot spares are not about longevity.  That’s a mis-statement of purpose.  Rather a hot spare is about data protection, which is the same thing RAID is used for.  Hot spares can be taken a level further by automatically engaging the hot spare when monitoring predicts a failure of another drive before the drive actually fails.  That could be done faster than a full rebuild with clever design. 

To be fair, my use case and experience may not align with the OWC target market for SoftRaid.  I design primary enterprise class storage systems for a living and I’m used to these features at scale. My use case at home for SoftRaid is also at scale - I run generic USB attached JBODs to build really big volumes (30TB plus) with 6-10 drives each as opposed to leveraging something like a TB3 attached set of SSDs. These volumes support virtualization labs and other projects where I need size and am willing to sacrifice performance for cost.  My JBOD enclosures run about $30 per disk slot and hang off an old MacMini, for example. 

Thanks for listening.

@bcg365

I understand. I used to sell some hardware RAID back in the day, also. OPne major difference with software RAID is the use of predictive failure. It is very rare to have to disks fail at once, with predictive failure. Out of 50K plus active SoftRAID users, maybe I see this every few years, usually when the user has ignored the first drive prediction.

We would like to go where you are thinking, but Apple has totally distracted us from building RAID technology, when we have to focus instead on keeping up with Security changes. Also, it is a challenge to get SMART data over USB in Catalina/Big Sur, which I think we may be able to sort out soon.

We have a RAID 6+ coming also, which will interest you. cannot write about it until we get the code implemented, but it is a cool technology.

We are going to see more larger enclosures in the market, an 8 bay is not enough for more and more users, who want more and more disks in an array. SoftRAID currently supports 16 disks in a volume, that number has to be increased, and at the same time, more safety features built in, along the lines of what you are thinking.

@softraid-support

So I don't have Disk Warrior but I ran Disk Utility First Aid over the volume that has the error on startup and there were some directory issues that were repaired.  Rebooted and didn't get an I/O error.  Looks like this is resolved and not a SoftRAID issue.

Thanks for all the troubleshooting help!

Good evening, on my IMAC I9 late 2019
I have an OWC box with softraid XT Lite software with four Sabrent hd nvme.
Before moving on to Big Sur everything worked out. Now using the beta version of Softraid the icons of the hd raid are no longer visible.
How can I solve?
When will version 6 final be released?
Thanks.
Joseph

The driver is not installing. Probably because you did not "Allow" OWC as an identified developer. Go to System Preferences/Security and see if you can approve OWC.

I have been staying on b43 as there were problems for Intel users on later releases. Should I update to b48 now or just continue to hold?

B48 is fine. I only have had one user who has an issue with b48 vs b43.

It the Trial Popup notification expected to happen at any random time after the machine was booted?  If I remember it used to only happen immediately on boot and launch but now it pops up on me randomly throughout the day.

@dfortney

No it should not. Perhaps the Monitor crashed? Check the system log for SoftRAID next time this happens. filter for SoftRAID (You can access it from SoftRAID).

We are going to reduce the amount of beta alerts also.

Logs show no issues but remember that com.softraid.softraidd Launch Agent that stays disabled even though I re-enabled it from CleanMyMac X.  No matter how many times I try re-enabling it it is always again disabled after a reboot for some reason. I am not sure how to properly enable it again.

Try uninstall SoftRAID utilities menu, then reinstall.

Says I won't be able to read any of my RAID and it removes the preferences... Little nervous.

OK, I uninstalled and reinstalled and it is still disabled.  Try again re-enabling it and again it goes back to disabled next reboot.

As you discovered, the driver only mounts SoftRAID volumes, removing it does not damage the volumes.

I am not sure why it is not loading.

Trial pop-up shows on wake from display sleep on my intel mac mini and there is nothing in the log about it having restarted or anything like that during the wake or sleep.