RAID 5 Making iMac Hang on Restart, Also Forces Restart? HELP.

On Mojave, interesting. Clearly there is a directory issue, perhaps it is pointing to a strange "location".

Can you save the "report to Apple", More details crash log? Save it to a text edit file. hopefully you can post an rtf. we added it, but may not be working for all.

@softraid-support There is no crash report. When I plug in the RAID disk to the Mac while it's on, it just goes to re-start, then just hangs on the startup screen (progress bar, black screen). If I try to startup with the RAID disk already plugged in, it hangs up on the startup screen at the same point. It stays like that indefinitely until I physically press the power button.

I don't have another mac to try it on at this location.

OK, I updated to SoftRaid 6 and was able to plug in the RAID while the computer was running. The RAID is not being recognized, but I can see the SOFTRAID.log 

Here's where things went wrong: I was rendering a video (moving data) at the exact moment I bumped the thunderbolt cable and momentarily disconnected the RAID. This instantly threw a read/write error in the log on all 4 disks. They were all working at the time. The log says the disks "were marked as failed". Even though the RAID was still plugged in and only momentarily disrupted, the disks were all marked as failed?

Does this mean they can somehow be "UN-marked" as failed and I can run some kind of test to see if there was any damage? This feels like there's some "failed" tag on the disks but they may not actually be bad disks. They can't all be failed at the same time, right?

Here are the log lines:

Jul 2 01:00:25 - SoftRAID Driver: A disk (disk6, SoftRAID ID: 0863B713AABB9C80) for the SoftRAID volume "FCP PROJECTS BALDWIN" (disk10) encountered multiple read or write errors. This disk has been marked "failed" and will no longer be used for when reading volume data.
Jul 2 01:00:25 - SoftRAID Driver: A disk for the volume "FCP PROJECTS BALDWIN" (disk10) encountered a write error (E00002C1). The disk (disk6, SoftRAID ID: 0863B713AABB9C80) was unable to write sectors. The error occurred at volume offset 6612220674048 (i/o block size 49152). This disk should be replaced.
Jul 2 01:00:25 - SoftRAID Driver: A disk for the volume "FCP PROJECTS BALDWIN" (disk10) encountered a write error (E00002C1). The disk (disk7, SoftRAID ID: 0863B715304EE300) was unable to write sectors. The error occurred at volume offset 6612220674048 (i/o block size 49152). This disk should be replaced.
Jul 2 01:00:25 - SoftRAID Driver: A disk for the volume "FCP PROJECTS BALDWIN" (disk10) encountered a write error (E00002C1). The disk (disk8, SoftRAID ID: 0863B717887CC300) was unable to write sectors. The error occurred at volume offset 6612220674048 (i/o block size 49152). This disk should be replaced.
Jul 2 01:00:25 - SoftRAID Driver: A disk for the volume "FCP PROJECTS BALDWIN" (disk10) encountered a write error (E00002C1). The disk (disk5, SoftRAID ID: 0863B71148C86880) was unable to write sectors. The error occurred at volume offset 6612220674048 (i/o block size 49152). This disk should be replaced.
Jul 2 01:00:25 - SoftRAID Driver: A disk (disk7, SoftRAID ID: 0863B715304EE300) for the SoftRAID volume "FCP PROJECTS BALDWIN" (disk10) encountered multiple read or write errors. This disk has been marked "failed" and will no longer be used for when reading volume data.
Jul 2 01:00:25 - SoftRAID Driver: A disk (disk8, SoftRAID ID: 0863B717887CC300) for the SoftRAID volume "FCP PROJECTS BALDWIN" (disk10) encountered multiple read or write errors. This disk has been marked "failed" and will no longer be used for when reading volume data.
Jul 2 01:00:25 - SoftRAID Driver: A disk (disk5, SoftRAID ID: 0863B71148C86880) for the SoftRAID volume "FCP PROJECTS BALDWIN" (disk10) encountered multiple read or write errors. This disk has been marked "failed" and will no longer be used for when reading volume data.
Jul 2 01:00:25 - SoftRAID Driver: A disk (disk5, SoftRAID ID: 0863B71148C86880) for the SoftRAID volume "FCP PROJECTS BALDWIN" (disk10) encountered multiple read or write errors. This disk has been marked "failed" and will no longer be used for when reading volume data.

@james-show

If your volume is mounting and you can read/write from it, then yes you can fix this by "recover failed disks" in SoftRAID and let it rebuild/validate.

Also, clear any IO errors.

let me know.

@softraid-support I just want to be clear before doing anything drastic... I can restart the mac with the RIAD unplugged and THEN I plug the RAID into the mac (thunderbolt cable) and the raid shows up on the desktop. But when I start Softraid, I get a ton of errors. When I start clicking the drives in Softraid to look at the errors, softraid freezes the mac and I have to reboot again. 

Can I safely open the RAID from the desktop and look around? I see the files, but I have not tried to open anything yet because I don't want to overwrite anything. It seems like all the trouble starts when I open softraid. 

@james-show

Can you paste this into terminal and see if you can create a support file on the desktop? then you can attach it. Its possible there is a hardware (drive) issue, which seems most logical.

softraidtool generatereport ~/Desktop/James.Show.7.2.21.sr_supt

I'm able to start up my mac, THEN plug in the RAID thunderbolt cable... then I get Apple "Disk unrecognizable" error messages. If I click "Ignore", the disk lands on my desktop. I can open the drive like normal and see all my files. I have been dragging them over to a backup disk for the last few hours, just trying to copy what I can. However, if I open softRAID and click on any window, my mac immediately freezes. If I never open softRAID, I can copy files from the RAID with no trouble, however, it does seem a bit slow. 

Why would I be able to use the RAID if softRAID is telling me I have several failed disks?

@james-show

DIsk 5 appears blank and will be generating the OS X message. I think it was part of your RAID and is failing, notice that it is not reporting any data on SMART or power on hours. I would unplug it and your volume may be more stable.

You need to replace it, but backing up first is necessary.

@softraid-support This may be a stupid question, but how do I know which disk in the RAID is "Disk 5"? My softRaid keeps crashing on me, so I cannot open that report.

@james-show

It has serial number NAGVGEPY

You can run SoftRAID, put the drives in one at a time, and watch for the one which does not have a link to a volume.

@softraid-support Thank you for letting me know the serial number. 

Is there an article or video I can follow for the procedure to replace the bad drive? I have never done that before and I’m pretty worried about making this worse. 

You said to run softraid and put the disks in one at a time to see which one does not have a link, but remember, every time I run softraid, my Mac freezes if the RAID is connected. So that probably won’t work. 

Also, I thought everything would be powered OFF when I replace a hard drive. Can I do this with power OFF? Pull the drives to find that serial number and then put them back in the same order with the dead one replaced with a new one? And then turn everything on again? Or is that not how it’s done? 

Running softraid might not be an option due to the freezes. I’m hoping the freezes stop once I have all working drives. I’m getting a new drive this morning. Please let me know. 

thank you. 

@james-show

Yes you can power off the enclosure then locate the drive that is faulty. My idea would work also, as only the one bad drive is causing the hang.

Find the bad drive either way and remove it.

You then insert the new drive, but when you power it up, make sure your volume mounts. Then initialize the new drive with SoftRAID. "Add disk" and let it rebuild.

I powered off, found the disk, replaced it, then plugged back in. I initialized it with softRaid, then did "Add Disk". It started the rebuild and ran for about 30 minutes until this error popped up:

"SoftRAID Error
An internal part of the SoftRAID application has stopped functioning properly. Please quit SoftRAID and relaunch it."

So I did that. Quit, relaunched, and the re-build continued.

It's been doing that every 30 minutes or so. 7 hours of re-build left to go. 

Any suggestions?

Jim