[Sticky] Feature Discussion suggestions

I would like to see the ability to view larger text, as a preference.  

I can't wear glasses for another year or so ( medicine makes my eyesight change somewhat from day to day) and right now have to resort to using my old darkroom Zeiss loupe.  

@pavel

Good suggestion!

We are investigating disability enhancements to SoftRAID, so this would fit right in.

What ever happened to RAID-6 support?  Been hanging onto the beta chain just waiting for that feature item which always seemed like - "it's coming"...

Today happy to see the new version - promptly updated - then realized it was the formal release and now debating whether it's worth $99 upgrade without the RAID6 support teased for so long or I have to drop all the way back to the last SoftRaid 5.x code level... my RAID setup hangs off an older MacMini so don't need more than Catalina support, but I really wanted RAID6.  

To highlight the importance of RAID6 - just spent 42 hours in a rebuild after a disk failed, including running the verify on the disk that was to be the replacement.  So that was 42 hours without any protection other than backup, and I dread the day the whole thing barfs and I need 25TB from Backblaze.  RAID6 isn't a panacea for sure, but it at least adds a modicum of protection when rebuild times encroach on the likelihood of a 2nd failure.

We were not going to complete RAID 6 support before releasing SoftRAID 6, so we had to remove it. It is still in our plans, however.

Any updates on RAID 6 support?  Would really like to reformat my TB Flex to RAID 6 before I start filling it up too much.  As far as other feature requests, would love the ability to front a RAID array w/ a NVMe drive as a hot write cache.  Even better would be the ability to have a single volume w/ cached fronted 2 raid arrays behind it.

@zsoldier

After we release 6.1, we intend to start working on RAID 6 again. I am guessing this is dependent on the level of changes in macOS 12, however.

We have a cache drive technology, but it was not giving adequate performance to justify itself. That idea has been shelved in favor of increasing overall RAID performance, which is also in our sights.

thanks!

@softraid-support - nice thanks for the update.

This is my biggest disappointment currently and my greatest wish.  My wife does not use a computer, she uses the fourth gen iPad, but with the new Macs and iPads all running on the same chip, we'd be happy to get her an M1 iPad - if only she then could see the two arrays that we use for photos.  

Is there any hope of a future move to iOS M1 devices?

@pavel

At the moment, no. There needs to be a driver kit for the iPad and I don't see that happening in the near future, but you never know.

Please add Check For Update option in menubar app menu so I don't have to launch softraid and then go to that app menu to check updates and then quit that app.  Ideally the menubar app should check for updates when the user clicks in the menubar icon if it hasn't checked during the past 24 hours.

@dfortney 

I will put in the request. Cannot promise anything.

Those of us who support both Windows and Mac family members need RAID 0+1 or 1+0 or 10 (however you term it). 

In may own case, I would spring for a upgrade fee to get this feature.  At the moment, I am using a convoluted process with two different RAID formats in the same enclosure and backing up 0 to 1, but as I already have 4 identical drives, this process reduces the amount of space protected.  And yes, we are approaching the 16 TB of the mirrored drives (photos, movies, etc).  Streaming is no option - only Satellite Internet at this location (not Starlink, unfortunately)

@mcclaigg 

RAID 1+0 is in our road map. I cannot comment on schedule, but it is under development.

it’s been years and no sign of raid 6 yet. What’s going on there and is it still planned to allow a raid 5 to 6 migration without the need for data backups and restoration.