Softraid 6.21 (Pro) and Monterey 12.3 - Thunderflex8 will not mount

First question is:

Did you do this?
https://support.apple.com/en-lk/guide/mac-help/mchl768f7291/mac
Select reduced security and enable this:
Select the “Allow user management of kernel extensions from identified developers” checkbox to allow installation of software that uses legacy kernel extensions.

Now you need to reinstall the SoftRAID driver. (Utilities menu)

After reinstalling the SoftRAID driver, (do not immediately restart) and go to System Preferences / Security to "Allow" OWC as an identified developer.

If that is the problem (most likely), this will fix it.

Thanks guys, this did it. I feel derpy, heh.. I've had to do this exact thing with my earlier systems, every one of them... how I forgot about the most important part this time, not sure.

Thanks again.

Spoke too soon. I can get it to load now, but indexing/spotlight hangs with nothing running, only one raid connected. On my 2019 MacPro 16 core I was able to plug in all raids and it would index everything in one go over the course of six-eight hours.

With my M1 Mini and M1 Max MBP, neither were ever able to index the OWC thunderflex8 drives using softraid, always the most up to date softraid versions etc. Same thing, it would hang part way through, regardless of which raid I tried.

I told myself ignorantly it must be a ram issue, so I moved to the M1 Ultra given it's obvious speed advantages. So far the same issues are present, and I assume I am not the only M1 user with a large raid from OWC running softraid... so there has to be something else happening. 

Zero other drivers/software etc installed thus far, so it's 100% MacOS and Softraid and a Raid. I'd say perhaps it's a file on my raid causing the issue, on the intel driven Mac Pro, it gobbles up the indexing tasks for all drives connected at once.. where as every M1 hangs on either of the raids.

Of course I have done the obvious things, restarting indexing, adding it to spotlight/privacy, then removing it etc. I wasn't sure if it was possible there are older spotlight files on the raid from earlier indexing messing with this time? Makes no sense honestly... but I'm at a loss. Apple creates a system this powerful and it can't index one softraid powered raid when a lower powered intel Mac Pro handles it with ease... that makes no sense. ha

Happy to send you anything that will help, or try anything you suggest.

thanks guys!

@jd1 

I do not know, but it could be the spotlight index. Did you exempt spotlight, restart then delete the exemption?

What do you mean/how do you know, spotlight is hanging? Is it just because it is never finishing, or are there other symptoms?

Its possible it is a directory issue, perhaps.

@softraid-support 

When you say exempt spotlight.. do you mean go into system prefs / spotlight / and add the raid to the list, click apply and close prefs...then reopen prefs / spotlight / remove the raid from the list which then should tell the comp to index the drive?

If so... yes, I even added an extra step when it wasn't working. I'd add the drive to the do not index list via the above description, then restart. Upon restarting, the mac I command space and type a couple letters randomly to open spotlight to see if it's indexing, or if it has started etc. 

Because the main drive was already indexed being a new comp with nothing installed yet, it took few moments of left to right line progress bar sweeping motion before it realized all was indexed.

I then remove the raid from the spotlight - list, count to about 30 seconds or so and again command space to open spotlight, type some random letters to see if it's started. If it has, I take screen grab of the window so when I come back, I can see if any progress has been made.

With the M1 mini and M1 Max MBP, it would start indexing, get partial way and then stop... and it would then mimic a system that ran out of ram. Activity mon would show no ram leak, but the finder would become slow and more or less unresponsive. If I made the mistake of force restarting the finder, it wouldn't restart. It would now have no dot under it in the menu dock...mans when you click it, the dot would show up for a second, then disappear. Only way at this point to get the computer usable again was a power button down restart. This of course, never a good idea.

So the M1 and M1 Max Pro basically were useless connected to OWC raids of size because they'd never index them, and eventually.. just bottom out where nothing worked. Restarting would of course start the index again that would again, fail. It's frustrating to get the M1 Max and then go back to a Mac Pro and the Mac Pro is faster only in that it can index everything the first time, perfectly.

I assumed a Monterey bug but then it works with intel so no idea.

I say spotlight hangs because it will get to a set point, and never move... and then as I said, the comp becomes unresponsive. Activity monitor won't open, nothing will.. finder can't be restarted. I thought maaaaybe it's just busy.. so I did a test and left it this way for six days. Same thing, hadn't moved, still unresponsive.

I plugged in the M1 Ultra today.. it wasn't indexing so I added it to the - spotlight list and restarted, made sure it was indexed up to date which it was. Restarted again for good luck,  it needed but nothing had worked so nothing to lose. heh. Started up, removed the raid from the - list and last time I checked... it is indexing. It's a 112tb raid so I assume it'll take time. I'll check tomorrow and see if it froze. No idea why it seems to be working, but maybe this time it does.

How would I find if it it's a directory issue? Weird intel Mac Pro index with no issues though isn't it? Could there be hidden spotlight folders messing it up or something? Is there a way to remove all spotlight / folder prefs off an external?

I'll let you know if it works. 👍

@jd1 

You wouldn't have Disk Warrior on your intel computer? (and a Big Sur or older OS?) I wonder if this was symptoms of some directory issues.

I don't think this is SoftRAID, but it could be directory related, perhaps some volume size issue? Its strange, one would think M1's would easily chug through huge volume sizes.

I had not been aware of this issue before for M1 computers, but clearly many others suffer from it.

Here is an idea. Run the little Mints1 utility from Electric Light:

https://eclecticlight.co/2021/02/19/spotlight-on-search-how-to-diagnose-and-fix-problems/

https://eclecticlight.co/2021/02/08/how-to-test-spotlight-out-in-30-seconds-with-mints-1-0b11/

https://eclecticlightdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2021/02/mints1.zip

Let me know how this goes. Electric Light is a very intelligent macOS guy, I expect this may be helpful.