Running SoftRaid on Apple Silicon (M1) Macs including 2020 Mac Mini with M1 - Big Sur Issues

RE: Running SoftRaid on Apple Silicon (M1) Macs including 2020 Mac Mini with M1

SoftRAID Support — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 19:56:41 +0000

@effndc

It is unlikely to be SoftRAID, but I often see Big Sur require two restarts on updates. Was this a double restart, or an actual kernel panic?

RE: Running SoftRaid on Apple Silicon (M1) Macs including 2020 Mac Mini with M1

effndc — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 18:50:59 +0000

Just an update, the most recent beta of 11.3 (20E5217a) also seems to work fine with SoftRAID 6.0.1 b53. I did have one kernel panic on the first boot after upgrading to this version, but cannot say if this was due to SoftRAID or not.

RE: Running SoftRaid on Apple Silicon (M1) Macs including 2020 Mac Mini with M1

effndc — Fri, 19 Mar 2021 00:47:20 +0000

After rebooting it seems that SoftRAID is working normally on 11.3 public beta4 (20E5210c). I have 4 SSDs in a Thunderbay Mini (Thunderbolt 2) in a RAID5 and am seeing ranges from ~630-750MB/sec for reads and writes.

RE: Running SoftRaid on Apple Silicon (M1) Macs including 2020 Mac Mini with M1

effndc — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 22:31:11 +0000

@softraid-support interestingly, it auto-mounted after "some time". I had selected to mount it in the SoftRAID GUI as it didn't mount on boot, it failed to mount and went back to "unmounted" state. I tried that a few times with the same pattern of it not mounting. I left my computer for a while and came back to find my SoftRAID volume mounted. 🤷‍♂️

RE: Running SoftRaid on Apple Silicon (M1) Macs including 2020 Mac Mini with M1

SoftRAID Support — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 22:07:36 +0000

@effndc

This is an exception, as there was no change in status on this. Also, System updates do not "downgrade" the driver, so when you update macOS, everything should be as it was, without needing to run SoftRAID and update the driver again.

Here is what to check:

1. Is there a "disk identifier" in the volumes tile? (expand it, it should have a number)

if it does, then perhaps this is a directory issue, as the volume was published to macOS for mounting.

Then do you have a copy of Disk Warrior to rebuild the Directory?

2. If not, is SoftRAID listed as loaded in System report under extensions? (or you can run kextstat in terminal and see if SoftRAID is listed)

if SoftRAID is listed, then either 1 above is the issue, or the volume directory is too damaged to mount.

3. If the driver is not loading, run this command in terminal and let me know what the output from terminal is (text, not a screen shot)

kextload -v /Library/Extensions/SoftRAID.kext

RE: Running SoftRaid on Apple Silicon (M1) Macs including 2020 Mac Mini with M1

effndc — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 19:05:43 +0000

@softraid-support Sadly, it seems that 11.3 public beta 4 (20E5210c) broke things again. Back to silent failure to mount the drive, which likely means the driver is being blocked from loading again.

RE: Running SoftRaid on Apple Silicon (M1) Macs including 2020 Mac Mini with M1

ccrosby94 — Wed, 17 Mar 2021 18:17:32 +0000

Just for the heck of it I decided to uninstall the SoftRaid beta and reinstall it. This time I confirmed I "Allowed" SoftRaid in system preferences and restarted my computer. Guess what - the RAID mounts in Finder and Disk Utility now! So I can confirm the macOS 11.3 beta and the latest beta of SoftRaid fixes the problem.

RE: Running SoftRaid on Apple Silicon (M1) Macs including 2020 Mac Mini with M1

ccrosby94 — Wed, 17 Mar 2021 18:00:17 +0000

I recently received a new M1 MacBook Air that I set up as a clean install. I read through most of this thread and followed the suggested advice - install macOS 11.3 public beta (build 20E5210c) and the latest beta of SoftRaid (6.0.1 b53). While SoftRaid does run and shows my drive as connected, the drive does not mount.

In SoftRaid, it does show the individual drives and the full RAID drive but says that it's unmounted. Right-clicking and choosing "Mount" fails to mount it. In Disk Utility I can see the individual drives but not the full RAID.

I've made sure SoftRaid shows up as a login item in System Preferences and I've confirmed that SoftRaid has been "Allowed" in System Preferences and has full disk access, etc.

RE: Running SoftRaid on Apple Silicon (M1) Macs including 2020 Mac Mini with M1

thecodingart — Tue, 16 Mar 2021 23:13:27 +0000

As a heads up, I just received the following response from Apple on a feedback item I filed early on:

As a result of your feedback, there are changes in the latest update, build 20E5210c, that have resolved this issue. You can see the software build your device is running and check for the latest update by clicking on the Apple logo in the upper left hand corner > About This Mac. If the build is not visible, click on the macOS version, e.g. 10.15.x, to reveal it.

RE: Running SoftRaid on Apple Silicon (M1) Macs including 2020 Mac Mini with M1

SoftRAID Support — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 18:39:41 +0000

@effndc

Great news. We have a theory why some users are not getting the beta to work, it may involve users with multiple startup volumes. i.e, there is a fix in beta 3, but there is still an issue.

We will be announcing that 11.3 public beta is working shortly.