[Sticky] Monterey Other issues

@softraid-support thanks for the response. What’s the risk of losing data with this change?

@jeffjohnson 

Virtually zero. (there is always risk, but it is very safe to convert and back)

@softraid-support OK. What's the process. I have about 6tb of data on both drives that doesn't reside anywhere else, so I'm apprehensive to mess with it unless this is a known fix that will resolve the issue. Do I switch the primary and then secondary drive? Do I do each immediately, or wait a certain duration between switching each one? Thanks!

Hey @JeffJohnson - Just a small recommendation, but I always think it's a great idea to have a backup of data no matter if you plan to make changes or not. That is just good data hygiene.

@tal 

Agree with tal. (the chess player!?)

Always have backups.

But I tested this today, as 6.2 has a bug and cannot convert back to SoftRAID from an Apple Mirror.

I see the same results. I have an Apple Mirror volume on a thunderbay (no SoftRAID disks) on Monterey on a 16" intel.

the drives are powering up all the time, just as yours, so clearly this is a Monterey/macOS issue.

@tal I guess I was thinking that having the data in 2 places was enough. Should I have 2 Thunderbays so it's in 4 places? :-) 

@softraid-support Since you replied to @tal, I wasn't sure if you were also replying to my question about switching to the Apple volume and then back to SoftRAID? Is that what you were testing? If this is a Monterey/MacOS issue, where do we go from here? Is this something that a future SoftRAID 6.x can overcome or does this get reported to Apple in some way? Does this seem to be just a HDD issue because when I disconnect the Thunderbay and continue to use a different SSD, I don't see the same lag issues when doing some of the same tasks. Thanks!

@jeffjohnson re Backups, it is always best to have 2 or 3 separate locations for data. One should be "off site", another "off line".

RAID is not the same as backup, as while it gives data availability when you lose a disk, it does not protect against file system damage, corrupted directories, accidental deletions, hacks, ransomware, etc etc. So having multiple backups is always important!

I was testing the Monterey sleep issues. SSD's "waken" instantly, so you won't see a lag when the drives "spin up", but the wake/sleep cycles are ubdoubtably going on with flash and HDD's, you just won't hear flash wake.

My result was the wake cycle happens with standard Apple RAID, also, so it is clearly a change in Monterey, i.e,  a bug.

@softraid-support Thank you. Since it is a Monterey issue, does your team have a way to report issues you see, or is this something that individual users like myself need to go and report it to Apple? 

@jeffjohnson 

Probably the more people that report it, the faster it will get fixed.

@softraid-support where is the best place to report it? Link?

@jeffjohnson 

Tidbits has a nice article on how:

https://tidbits.com/2020/06/17/how-to-report-bugs-to-apple-so-they-get-fixed/

Here are Apple links:

https://www.apple.com/feedback/

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-5931

https://developer.apple.com/bug-reporting/profiles-and-logs/

Running Monterey 12.1 on 2021 16" MBP M1 Max with SoftRAID XT 6.2.1.b3, Thunderbay8 in RAID5.

Some issues unmounting the drive and releasing from use. Even when I try to delete a volume i'm getting an error message despite nothing being mounted.

@sithu 

This is Time machine hanging on to the volume. Did you try deleting it from Time Machine first?

@softraid-support 

Yes I removed the disk from time machine (it says "select backup disk"), although the volume icon when mounted is still the green time machine icon. Still not able to delete volume. Waited an hour with all drives unmounted and still not able to. These are all brand new 16TB Seagate Exos drives (8 drives in Thunderbay8).