ThunderBlade Read-Access only

Do you also have a dock connected?

This is happening after waking from sleep?

It should not happen at all in active use.

the cause is when disks are connected, macOS assigns disk identifiers to each disk (you can see them in the disk tiles if you expand them).

These numbers should never change during a boot cycle, as it is how a driver identifies what disk to write to. there is a bug in the kernel that allows this. We can reproduce it by sleeping a system, then moving drives in an enclosure. That would cause some serious data corruption, so we built in a protection in SoftRAID that when this state is detected, the volume is locked until you restart, so the disks can be assigned correct numbers.

If for instance during sleep there is any momentary interruption in the Thunderbolt signal, the disks are give new disk numbers at wake up. Since thunderbolt powers off disks instantly on a chip "crash", or a cable pull, etc, it can cause this issue with any instability in your chain.

Did you change any hardware recently? Is this a standard cable? Can you try a different one?

@softraid-support There is not so much connected to my iMac - no docking station:

1. TB3 ThunderBlade 4x960.2 GB
2. USB: Anker 60W 7-Port USB 3.0 Data hub, to connect
   1. HP laser printer
   2. Segate 5TB HDD for TimeMachine
3. USB: Sony XQD adapter to transfer pictures from camera memory card. Only temporally connected - not direct effect on ThunderBlade error observed 
4.  BT
   1. Keyboard
   2. Mouse

I use the "original OWC" cable. I tried a longer cable during set-up, worked fine too. But this was before I encountered this problem.

Where can I check the change in disk identifies? Here is the

stella:~ Stefan$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *960.2 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI ⁨⁩                        209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2: B6FA30DA-92D2-4A9A-96F1-871EC6486200 ⁨⁩              2.3 MB     disk0s2
   3: 2E313465-19B9-463F-8126-8A7993773801 ⁨⁩              7.3 MB     disk0s3
   4: FA709C7E-65B1-4593-BFD5-E71D61DE9B02 ⁨⁩              959.8 GB   disk0s4
   5:                 Apple_Boot ⁨Boot OSX⁩                134.2 MB   disk0s5

/dev/disk1 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *960.2 GB   disk1
   1:                        EFI ⁨⁩                        209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2: B6FA30DA-92D2-4A9A-96F1-871EC6486200 ⁨⁩              2.3 MB     disk1s2
   3: 2E313465-19B9-463F-8126-8A7993773801 ⁨⁩              7.3 MB     disk1s3
   4: FA709C7E-65B1-4593-BFD5-E71D61DE9B02 ⁨⁩              959.8 GB   disk1s4
   5:                 Apple_Boot ⁨Boot OSX⁩                134.2 MB   disk1s5

/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *960.2 GB   disk2
   1:                        EFI ⁨⁩                        209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2: B6FA30DA-92D2-4A9A-96F1-871EC6486200 ⁨⁩              2.3 MB     disk2s2
   3: 2E313465-19B9-463F-8126-8A7993773801 ⁨⁩              7.3 MB     disk2s3
   4: FA709C7E-65B1-4593-BFD5-E71D61DE9B02 ⁨⁩              959.8 GB   disk2s4
   5:                 Apple_Boot ⁨Boot OSX⁩                134.2 MB   disk2s5

/dev/disk3 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *2.0 TB     disk3
   1:                        EFI ⁨EFI⁩                     314.6 MB   disk3s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS ⁨Container disk5⁩         2.0 TB     disk3s2

/dev/disk4 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *960.2 GB   disk4
   1:                        EFI ⁨⁩                        209.7 MB   disk4s1
   2: B6FA30DA-92D2-4A9A-96F1-871EC6486200 ⁨⁩              2.3 MB     disk4s2
   3: 2E313465-19B9-463F-8126-8A7993773801 ⁨⁩              7.3 MB     disk4s3
   4: FA709C7E-65B1-4593-BFD5-E71D61DE9B02 ⁨⁩              959.8 GB   disk4s4
   5:                 Apple_Boot ⁨Boot OSX⁩                134.2 MB   disk4s5

/dev/disk5 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +2.0 TB     disk5
                                 Physical Store disk3s2
   1:                APFS Volume ⁨2TB-SSD⁩                 15.3 GB    disk5s1
   2:              APFS Snapshot ⁨com.apple.os.update-...⁩ 15.3 GB    disk5s1s1
   3:                APFS Volume ⁨Macintosh HD - Data⁩     122.8 GB   disk5s2
   4:                APFS Volume ⁨Preboot⁩                 497.0 MB   disk5s3
   5:                APFS Volume ⁨Recovery⁩                622.9 MB   disk5s4
   6:                APFS Volume ⁨VM⁩                      2.1 GB     disk5s5

/dev/disk6 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *5.0 TB     disk6
   1:                        EFI ⁨EFI⁩                     209.7 MB   disk6s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS ⁨5TB-stella-backup⁩       5.0 TB     disk6s2

/dev/disk7 (virtual):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS ThunderBlade           +3.8 TB     disk7

@stefferber DiskUtil list does not show the disk serial number so you can actually check this. You can try it with System Profiler.

@softraid-support

is it this one?

@stefferber

If you click on the Sata/Sata Express tab, you should see each disk listed. the serial number is on the 4th line in the lower window.

@softraid-support

this one?

@stefferber

Let me post a screen capture for you to look at. It will take a few hours.

@stefferber

I did not post the screen shot. Feel free to respond here if you do not get a same day response,every post is answered in less than 24 hours, but it is not a "ticket" system, so sometimes a reply is missed. Apologies for that.

Here is where you can see the disks in System Profiler:

What the volume locking means is SoftRAID is making the volume read only to protect against a data corruption issue in macOS. When you connect your Thunderblade, macOS assigns each disk a "disk identifier", which you can see in SoftRAID's disk tiles (disk2 for example)

These should be permanent until next restart. sometimes, especially waking from sleep, the numbers change without your disconnecting the disks. If SoftRAID wrote to the disks, it would cause data corruption, so SoftRAID checks the disks each wake from sleep to make sure the disk identifier has not changed. If it has, then the volume is locked by the driver.

this is almost always a wake from sleep issue. If there is a momentary disconnection of the enclosure during sleep, etc, then disks are reassigned numbers, but the bug is that the "IO Registry" does not have the new disk numbers.

If you are using a hub or dock, sometimes that can trigger this. Or if you move the computer or any cables during sleep, this can happen.

How often are you getting this? Is it always waking from sleep?

We sent you a response on the spam issue. It is "waiting for customer response". Maybe our last email went to the junk folders?T

The Spamhaus issue is your ISP, not on our end. We cannot do anything about what your ISP is blocking as attachments.

these issues are always a problem, we have several times had "anti virus" companies tell users SoftRAID contained a virus (it never has, and everything we release is code signed by Apple) which is time consuming to deal with.

The initial emails to support cannot contain attachments. However, responses can have attachments, as a case has been opened.

We could probably add Png files. What is really needed for helping users are Tech Support files. I 100% prefer Tech Support files.

@softraid-support

Yes, it happens after sleeping. No, there is no USB / TB3 in-between as already described in VERY DETAIL above.  

Which one is the "disk identifier"? This attribute does not appear in your screenshot nor in my. I expect more precision here.

And if I know the "disk identifier" how does it solve the problem?

@stefferber

Just because the device appears to be independently connected, does not mean it is. This is a macOS kernel bug where the OS is renumbering devices during sleep. yes, a USB device connected elsewhere can sometimes trigger this. A Thunderbolt bus has two ports on most machines, so while you see two connections, it is the same bus.

We added a check in SoftRAID, when a device wakes from sleep, to make sure the drives have the same "disk Identifier". these change evey time you restart or reconnect the device, they are assigned when the disks show up to macOS. Once macOS assigns a number to a device (disk), it is not supposed to change, ever, until the device is disconnected. When SoftRAID detects this happened, it locks the volume to prevent data corruption.

I am just asking you to test without devices and see what happens. Also, you need to set the System Preferences/energy saver to not sleep.

So do these things:

uncheck "put disks to sleep" in System preferences/Energy Saver

Try using the system without other devices connected when letting the system sleep

(try removing just one, then another, etc.)

This problem can even be triggered by having dual Monitors. Apple is aware of this bug for 4-5 years, but has not fixed it.

What we did was try to protect against data corruption from this issue.

Lets not worry about identifying the drives. I was wanting to see if one drive was being affected in the enclosure, but it is too complicated.In your screen shot, the serial number is identified, I think it is the "seriennumber" field.

@softraid-support OK. De-activated "put disks to sleep" in System preferences/Energy Saver

I will report if the error shows up again

@stefferber

These are frustrating issues. Thunderbolt runs so fast, even a nanosecond time disconnection powers off the disks momentarily, which will trigger this error.

@softraid-support 

Finally, I resolved the issue. After 50+ times getting this error message I changed the mount point. In my original set-up the ThunderBlade mounted to

/User/<my-user-name>

Every time this error message appeared MacOS could not handle it, except re-booting. 

After I changed the mount point to

/User/<my-user-name/Pictures/TB-Pictures

this error message vanished completely. 

There are also other reasons, why it is not a good idea to mount to your user directly e.g. if the device is physically not connected you cannot log-in any more.

@stefferber 

Glad you worked this out. MacOS definitely does not like external Home folders. what you did (aliasing/pointing just the large folders to external volumes, essentially) is much safer.