M1 Max Crashing, Anxious in Phoenix

@softraid-support Thanks for the reply. The issue started when I began copying my large files on HDDs to the Raid 5 array, then going to bed, expecting everything to copy overnight. In the morning, the computer had crashed and restarted, and was asking me for my password to log in. Sitting here doing more testing, when a crash happens the monitor just goes dark (or, it flashes some colors on the screen, which is an OLED CX TV from LG), then rebooted almost instantly. It did not show the old "kernal panic -- your system needs to be restarted" but then that might no longer be a thing in the age of M1. Shall I send you my hardware system report or anything?

@softraid-support

I use GoodSync, and app for backing up, and it was just syncing files from one ThunderBay to a backup NAS on my network.

It was running overnight, since it's a lot of files, and I don't know if it hung, but last night when it did crash on me when I was working, the entire screen/mouse locked up and I couldn't do anything for a couple minutes then it crashed and rebooted.

@softraid-support

Hmm, okay...they are set as RAID5 right now. Considering I use them mainly as working drives and back them up immediately to a NAS server, do you think it would be even better to just be RAID0? If a disk fails, I just replace it and then copy back from the NAS. 

I would gain some storage space I guess.

@peterinjapan

You can attach a SoftRAID tech support file.

Do you have 'put drives to sleep' unchecked? in System Preferences/energy

@mikeolbinski

The Watchdog would have been the entry in the panic, if there was a long hang/pause. Makes sense.

Yes you can try RAID 0, or even RAID 4. M1 panics are not well understood yet.

@softraid-support

Thank you. I'm assuming no way to convert from Raid 5 to 4 without erasing the whole thing?

@mikeolbinski

Correct. In my testing, however, I could reproduce the crash (we purchased a users System, which proves this is a bug in macOS, somewhere in the system, as I can "migrate" that system to any other M1 and get the crash, but a clean system on any computer does not.), but with RAID 4, no crashes. So I can predict it won't crash for you either.

@softraid-support Turn off drives when not in use is checked off, should I turn it on? Even with it off my HDDs always slept every 60 seconds, which is why I bought the SSD raid.

Attaching report here. I'll send another one next crash I get.

I'm doing some testing, re-copying files that were causing the crashes before. So far my impression is that the crashes come and go, and when the machine is "feeling crashy" it happens again and again. It also happened when I connected directly to my laptop as well as going through a Thunderbolt dock. 

@peterinjapan

It looks like your sleep is set to never? (good) and the drives are still powering down?

In your case, maybe we can try running in RAID 4 (if you can backup/create a new volume) and see if you get any issues.

Let me know if this is feasible.

@peterinjapan

When you say "crashy" you are getting pauses, or the fan spins up?

Next panic, can you save the crash file? (report to Apple, more details, then save to text edit as txt and attach)

I spent today copying a large number of files to my SSD from my HDD to try to force a crash. All morning it was working, even with multiple copy jobs going, and I thought, at least writing doesn't seem to be the problem, maybe it has to do with reading. I watched an anime video on my SSD while the copy job was going on, and eventually got one of the crashes (computer screen goes dark, computer reboots). This only happened once and I started my copy. I believe this is when it showed me the Softraid Error and asked me for my password to re-install the 

I went to work and, using screen sharing, continued to copy my files over while verifying that everything looked okay. Then suddenly the unit decided it wanted to get "crashy," and started crashing again and again, how many times I am not sure as I wasn't here. When I came home the computer asked for my password to log in, then promptly crashed, so I unplugged the SSD. This crashing fit once again had caused Chrome to crash and lose all its tabs, so I have a huge number of tabs I cannota recover. 

I am concerned that the "security policy" of the computer might not be what is needed so I'll check that next. Honestly no Mac in the history of Macs ever needed such silliness to work. I hope you get this fixed soon as you're causing harm to the idea that Macs "just work." 

Here are the last two crashes (the text of the report that the machine sends to Apple which I saved in BBedit)

I've booted to the security utility and Reduced Security as well as Allow user manager of kernal extensions and Allow remote management of kernal extensions were both checked, up til now. I've REMOVED the lower check box just to see if anything is different related to the crashing. 

I also have kernel panics with my MacBook Pro M1 Max and the Thunderbay 4. Crashes always when i transfer some files, and also when i run the Blackmagic Speedtest. I already installed the newest Betaversion without any effect. Please fix it. The Thunderbay it`s not useable at all at the moment.