Notifications
Clear all
Topic starter
We are purchasing 3 unit of OWC ThunderBay 4 with SoftRaid for our 3 workstation. As we understand that certification of the drive takes time, we are thinking of installing SoftRaid on another spare computer to certify and create the raid volume. Is this possible? Will the 3 workstation able to read raid volume certified and created by another computer. Thanks!
Posted : 03/06/2017 10:10 am
Yes, use the spare computer in SoftRAID trial mode, which lasts for 30 days. That is the simplest way to get this done.
Note: if you purchase disks from OWC with the Thunderbay, they come pre-certified. So there is less need to do this yourselves. OWC runs every thinderbay through a 3 pass certify before shipping a populated Thunderbay.
Posted : 05/06/2017 10:45 am
Do they? I bought a 16TB (4x4TB) ThunderBay 4 with SoftRAID in May and it did not certify. It failed on the first pass. After swapping drives two or three times under RMA it turned out that Slot A was bad. Just yesterday, I got the repaired enclosure back and I am re-certifying.
The spare drives OWC sells in the TB4 Sleds have a note to say they are pre-certified, but I don't see that written about the original 4 drives.
Posted : 15/07/2017 11:34 am
All pre-configured Thunderbays have disks that are certified. it is part of the process OWC uses to build the RAID 5 volumes that ships on the pre-configured Thunderbays.
In theory, DOA's like you encountered with Slot A should not happen, but it is possible, I suppose for it to fail during shipping for example, or have a intermittently weak connection.
But the drive are actually certified in the enclosure you receive.
Posted : 17/07/2017 2:53 am
does the process of certifying and creating volumes via another computer work only with thunderbays or does that work with all softraid settings?
i.e. Mediasonic Probox + drives certified and volume created on Macbook B and once completed moved to Macbook A to be used long term.
also... sorry for the threadjack.
Posted : 11/09/2017 10:59 am
SoftRAID can certify any (disk) device, including USB thumbdrives.
Yes you can move a disk from one machine to another. The idea behind a certify is to test whether a disk can read/write reliably and is not tied to a machine.
Posted : 11/09/2017 2:33 pm
SoftRAID can certify any (disk) device, including USB thumbdrives.
Yes you can move a disk from one machine to another. The idea behind a certify is to test whether a disk can read/write reliably and is not tied to a machine.
I have a dedicated Mac Mini with a variety of Thunderbolt enclosures for certification. The reason for the different enclosures is that some enclosures will let me certify certain brand/model drives simultaneously or that others support SAS connections so I can certify those disks for my Linux rack servers. I try not to use a disk in production until I’ve had SoftRAID certify it first.
Right now I’m certifying WD Red 10TB drives in a CalDigit T3 enclosure. Takes about 90+hours for all three disks running simultaneously, but I know they are good before installing in a Synology NAS.
Cheers,
Jon
Posted : 30/11/2017 7:28 pm
