Disk verification duration and simultaneous verification

Certify is a better test, but takes 6 times longer. Then you are actually stressing the drives and testing whether they can reliably read/write data.

You can do all at once, certainly.

Otherwise yes, initialize the drives and create a RAID volume.

Posted by: @softraid-support

Certify is a better test, but takes 6 times longer. Then you are actually stressing the drives and testing whether they can reliably read/write data.

You can do all at once, certainly.

 

Otherwise yes, initialize the drives and create a RAID volume.

Hi, thanks for your help.

So Menu>Disk>Certify. The Four discs simultaneously.

Can I abort the verification in progress of the first disc? I save 3 hours .-) to this whole process.

Thanks.

@atelier-cunha

Utilities menu, yes.

Posted by: @softraid-support

@atelier-cunha

Utilities menu, yes.

I am sorry; what do you mean by "Utilities menu"?

@atelier-cunha

Cancel is in the Utliities menu in SoftRAID.

Cancel verify/certify/validate type operations.

Posted by: @softraid-support

@atelier-cunha

Cancel is in the Utliities menu in SoftRAID.

Cancel verify/certify/validate type operations.

Ok .-) Thank you.

What if a disk presents this kind of message; should I consider this a real problem and use a new one for my raid without and doubt?

Images attached; the is a disk according to SoftRaid with only 115 hours of use :-(

You may be OK. Look in the SoftRAID log and see where the error occurred. If it was essentially on the last read of the disk, then you can ignore it.

Posted by: @softraid-support

You may be OK. Look in the SoftRAID log and see where the error occurred. If it was essentially on the last read of the disk, then you can ignore it.

Thanks again for your help.

Could you please help me understand the log? It says (at some point):

"Apr 18 00:09:46 - SoftRAID Application: The verify disk command for disk disk9, SN: 80L1S7GZS5FH, SATA bus 0, id 0, lun 0 (Thunderbolt) hung while reading (offset 25,400,705,024, i/o block size = 16,777,216). This disk should be replaced immediately.
Apr 18 00:09:49 - SoftRAID Application: The verify disk command for disk disk9, SN: 80L1S7GZS5FH, SATA bus 0, id 0, lun 0 (Thunderbolt) failed because this disk has unreadable sectors. It should be replaced immediately (error number = 206)."

Should I be worried? Or Keep using this disk?

Also I noticed that this is the only disk in APFS format.

All other 3 are older, in Mac Journaled and presented no errors after verification.

Should I format this HDDs for Raid in APFS or Journaled, before using them with the SoftRaid? Makes any difference?

Thanks you very much.

@atelier-cunha

A certify disk should never fail, it points to faulty hardware.

Verify should likewise never fail, but there are cases where it can be transient. verify again, see if it passes or not, but I would be suspicous of this disk. Age is not relevant to whether the error is real or not. Neither is the file system, as a verify is a raw disk read.

Before you can use a disk with SoftRAID, it must be initialized by SoftRAID. (APFS volumes have to be first manually unmounted as SoftRAID does not yet have the ability to unmount APFS volumes.

Posted by: @softraid-support

@atelier-cunha

A certify disk should never fail, it points to faulty hardware.

Verify should likewise never fail, but there are cases where it can be transient. verify again, see if it passes or not, but I would be suspicous of this disk. Age is not relevant to whether the error is real or not. Neither is the file system, as a verify is a raw disk read.

 

Before you can use a disk with SoftRAID, it must be initialized by SoftRAID. (APFS volumes have to be first manually unmounted as SoftRAID does not yet have the ability to unmount APFS volumes.

Hi, I did a second verification and that disk showed no error .-)

I will keep using the Mac Extended Journaled format.

I thought about Raid 5 but I am now considering Raid 0 for speed. I have my backup sustém as usual. Raid is not a backup; as we all know ;-) Just anotehr security layer; Am I correct?

After the Raid is done, if I do not create many Volumes, on my desktop I will see just one volume with the Raid name on it?

After that I can just copy my several work folders back from my backups to the new Raid e keep using them?

Thanks a lot.

@atelier-cunha

Correct, RAID is redundancy, not backup!

macOS only sees a single volume on the desktop.

Yes you can use the new volume just like any other volume.

Posted by: @softraid-support

@atelier-cunha

Correct, RAID is redundancy, not backup!

macOS only sees a single volume on the desktop.

Yes you can use the new volume just like any other volume.

Ok.

Ok.

Ok.

;-)

Thank you so much.

I will now start the Certify process for the next 48 hours ,-D

I am very grateful for this support.

And now when I was getting ready to proceed with my Raid, I start to receive this message repeatedly (attached image).
I restart the computer and this happens again. I have already uninstalled the application and installed a new copy and the result is the same .- (
There is not even a disc in the application as shown in the image.
What to do? Thanks.

@atelier-cunha

I have been tracking this for a couple days and engineering is researching this.

Can you send me a SoftRAID tech support file via command line:

softraidtool generatereport ~/desktop/atella.cunha.4.19.21.sr_supt

Just paste that line into the terminal.app. Attach it.

I can also paste the terminal commands for certify disk after I see the support file, if you have not yet certified the disks.

Last time you successfully ran SoftRAID did you certify? I am curious what is different now. Did you install anything?