Any monitor tool to say what background processes are doing?

Use CCC to clone again. It will only copy what was not completed. there is no problem with repeating the process.

When I check on the CCC APFS clone progress (after the ~6 hours it takes to complete) CCC reports that it got an error during the clone.  The disk is ejected.  I have tried this multiple times.  The data size, though, is about the same as a successful clone on a non-Softraid APFS disk in an OWC enclosure.  I'll try again just in case.

I created a JBOD for a Time Machine backup.  When I go into TM and select the disk TM hangs with the message "Preparing OW8 B TM 6 TB".

In Softraid creating an error report to send to you hangs with a spinning colorwheel.  The color wheel does not show in the screenshot.

So as of right now 3 things are happening:

The CCC clone (working)

The TM disk setup - as above, hung

The Softraid help log - as above, hung

I do appreciate your attention in working through all of the issues.

The Time Machine, this is a Big Sur change. Create the SoftRAID volume as APFS and it will work.

In the CCC logs, see what file it is hanging on. If the same file, perhaps a problem with the file or the disk?

You may have a hung disk ,restart and you can create a support file I bet.

Got a response from Bombich in regards to the CCC clone:

"this is failing because the destination is a RAID device. ... Apple doesn't support booting macOS from a RAID device, so I wouldn't attempt to back up the System to that volume. Erase the SoftRAID device in Disk Utility, then configure CCC again to back up to the new volume. This time, when prompted to allow CCC to erase the destination, choose the "Data Only" option at the bottom of the panel."

Clone Question:

1.  Since this is a JBOD Softraid volume, it is still seen as a RAID drive, rather than as a single disk?

2.  Assuming this was the case I tried to delete the JBOD volume and make it a standalone disk.  The volume delete failed with:

Did the delete fail because it was APFS?  It did do something, as the volume format is now unknown:

Time Machine Questions:

In reference to my earlier post about TM hanging with the message "preparing disk" when I tried to add a SoftRaid HFS+ volume:

Posted by: @softraid-support

The Time Machine, this is a Big Sur change. Create the SoftRAID volume as APFS and it will work.

According to Apple HFS+ is supported for TM backups in Big Sur:

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/types-of-disks-you-can-use-with-time-machine-mh15139/mac

I do have several TM backups that are working on HFS+ disks on an OWC (non-raid) enclosure.

Is this a Softraid limitation, not supporting HFS+ TM backups?

Left this out of my quote from Bombich (CCC):

I made a change for the next update that will automatically make that Data Only selection in these cases in the future (specifically, if I can detect that the destination is a SoftRAID device).

@caprichoso

This will be fine in CCC, as SoftRAID volume volumes are specifically non bootable now.

@caprichoso

Remember SoftRAID application does not support APFS yet. So if you manually unmount the APFS volume first, then you can delete the volume.

The Time Machine limitation is either a bug, or feature in Time Machine. Nothing SoftRAID can do about it. At least there is a solution.

Skipping TM for now (last backup seemed to go, but hung in cleaning up) concentrating on getting a CCC bootable clone.

Since it can't be a RAID volume, the plan is to remove the JBOD volume from SoftRaid and format it as an APFS direct disk.  Having the APFS volume unmounted in Softraid made no difference in the volume delete - the delete volume still errored out:

After doing multiple erasures with Disk Utility, Paragon Hard Disk Manager, and reboots I was finally able to delete the volume.    However on boot I get a Softraid notice to contact support due to a driver error.  When I try to format the disk in Disk Utility as APFS I get a kernel panic and my system crashes.  Tried several times, crashed each time.

Kernel Extensions in backtrace:
com.softraid.driver.SoftRAID(6.0.1b48)[12FF0061-5877-3C26-AF23-C1CC6C87175E]@0xffffff7fc162c000->0xffffff7fc165afff
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOStorageFamily(2.1)[B5300908-BF34-3D47-8776-FB154A6DEE4C]@0xffffff8021f3f000->0xffffff8021f50fff

Disk Utility is not able to work with SoftRAID formatted disks. Plus Time Machine makes it difficult to delete a SoftRAID volume as it is always holding on to it.

Here is what you need to do:

Use the blink disk light feature toidentify the physical disk here (disk7 currently).

Run SoftRAID and from volumes menu, "uninstall SoftRAID" to remove the driver from your system.

shut down.

Disconnect all the other disks, but this one. (Just pull them out an inch)

Startup.

Run Disk Utility and erase the disk.

Now you can run SoftRAID and install the driver and push in your other disks.