v 7.6 and Thunderbay 4 disks are slow to spin up

Just for reference, whatever the issue, it is not a SoftRAID driver problem.
In Ventura, the 7.5 driver always loads, with Sonoma, the 7.6. Both have been extensively tested with MacOS.

Are the drives always spinning down, so you notice the slow spin up, or are they simply taking more time to spin up than they used to?

What we need to differentiate is whether you are experiencing MacOS putting the drives to sleep too frequently, or if there is indeed a hardware issue, where the (perhaps) power supply is taking longer to spin up the drives.

IIRC, I first encountered this issue with my Thunderbay Mini enclosure when I installed the Ventura Public Beta. After replacing and reconfiguring all of the connections using known good certified Thunderbolt 4 cables of the shortest length possible and a lot of head scratching, I arrived at a viable work-around by disabling the option to "Put hard disks to sleep when possible". I routinely check after each macOS update and each new release of SoftRAID and the issue still remains and the work-around still works. Note, the only remaining hardware change would be to switch the 5,400 rpm drives in the enclosure for 7,200 rpm drives. I could try SATA SSDs but the HDs are more appropriate for my application. 

@joemikeb 

This is still a MacOS / Hardware Hibernate bug.

Its because of how the Mac hibernates, and it is outside our control. We wish this would get fixed at some time. Hibernate also put machines at risk of volume directory corruption, so it is best to unmount volumes before sleeping in any case.

Thanks @joemikeb

i don’t have a hibernation problem as I have the sleeping drives option disabled, due to my online backup service.

The sad thing is, the official advice from OWC support was go and buy some 3rd party software. It may be time to look elsewhere for a storage solution…. 

Posted by: @softraid-support

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@joemikeb 

This is still a MacOS / Hardware Hibernate bug.

Its because of how the Mac hibernates, and it is outside our control. We wish this would get fixed at some time. Hibernate also put machines at risk of volume directory corruption, so it is best to unmount volumes before sleeping in any case.

As a suggestion until Apple fixes the situation, as part of the SoftRAID installation to note the status of the energy Saver settings and when appropriate offer to reset them. It would have saved me a lot of troubleshooting time. 

@joemikeb 

I tend to agree. We have not yet, as the argument is "Apple is going to fix this".

We need to also update the disk eject dialog box. These changes may have to wait until next year, because of localization.

@bowcaps 

Are you referring to keeping the disks awake, where we recommend Caffeine, Amphetamine, etc for keeping them spinning? Both are "free" apps.

If you are referring to a directory problem, yes we recommend Disk Warrior. It is the only company that ever figured out how to rebuild an HFS directory. Directory repair is not our business, and can happen to any Mac user with external storage.

You can disable sleep and disksleep via the pmset command.

To see current settings:

❯ sudo pmset -g
Password:
System-wide power settings:
Currently in use:
standby 0
Sleep On Power Button 1
autorestart 0
powernap 1
networkoversleep 0
disksleep 0
sleep 0 (sleep prevented by powerd, bluetoothd, backupd-helper, coreaudiod, Music, backupd)
ttyskeepawake 1
displaysleep 30
tcpkeepalive 1
lowpowermode 0
womp 1

To disable sleep when using wall power:

> sudo pmset -c sleep 0

To disable disk sleep when using wall power:

> sudo pmset -c disksleep 0

To display pmset help:

> man pmset