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I know it’s been talked about before I think the last post I saw about it was in late 2022. I have seen posts going back at least 2 years stating some version of “It’s coming”. I personally would love the option for RAID 6. I actually think a lot of pro photographers/videographers and the like would adore having this extra peace of mind that comes with RAID 6. I also believe it would be a highly beneficial business move for SoftRAID. Can anyone point out another macOS / Windows piece of software that can do what SoftRAID does that supports RAID 6 for DAS configurations? I don’t think it exists. I know there is a demand I know the community would like RAID 6 implemented as an option ASAP.
Posted : 07/10/2023 12:33 am
Its still in our map, but we have noticed low demand for RAID 6 actually. There are lots of things coming, we may add RAID 6 next year perhaps, but other features are slightly higher on the list. (performance enhancements being a major one)
Posted : 09/10/2023 8:18 am
Can anyone point out another macOS / Windows piece of software that can do what SoftRAID does that supports RAID 6 for DAS configurations?
Not in software. But you can buy DAS enclosures that have it
Posted : 09/10/2023 3:45 pm
What about Thunderbolt? Maybe USB enclosures are why people want RAID 6. I would never trust USB (at least on a Mac) for critical active data. Apple's implementation leaves too much to be desired.
We did a long running statistical test against "bit rot", which is the main claim for RAID 6. In 18 months, not a single piece of bit rot, on an active volume, or a passive volume, running intensive IO 24 hours a day. We were running a 15 drive RAID 5, on budget Thunderbolt hardware.
I am not sure how many Petabytes we ran in our test, but we essentially proved, at least on macOS, there is no such thing as "bit rot". Most likely a flaw in the paper author's design, or their hardware setup, which was a linux configuration.
By their records, we should have seen more than one bit flip a month (byte mismatch). We saw zero. in 18 months. We stopped the test, as it was providing zero information at that point.
We found a similar contradiction with Memory testing on MacOS laptops. Dozens of Mac Laptops running a memory tester 24/7. We saw zero "bit flips" on that also. We were expecting that test to fail occasionally, but it never produced a faulty result. Our original plan was to release an app that could do this for thousands of computers (volunteers), but with zero failures in RAM, there was no point in our eyes.
Posted : 09/10/2023 4:44 pm
Topic starter
@syd any chance you have a link to a DAS that connects via USB-C with 5-8 hdd bays that has RAID 6 built in? I looked for weeks and could not find one.
Posted : 09/10/2023 5:05 pm
What about Thunderbolt? Maybe USB enclosures are why people want RAID 6. I would never trust USB (at least on a Mac) for critical active data.
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Totally agree with you there! I'm not an advocate for Raid 6, but just answering the OP question. I'm not even much of a fan of Raid 5 these days - Raid 10 is my go to.
This is the DAS that I've come across, but no direct experience:
https://www.terra-master.com/global/d8-thunderbolt-3.html
Posted : 09/10/2023 5:57 pm
