New Mac Studio M2. SoftRaid 8.3. ThunderBay Flex8. All Volumes Disappeared Waking Up - Not A Good Start!

Removing the u2 shuttle and opening to check the blades did not reveal any obvious issues. Put back together and reinstalled to Flex 8. Blade I need still not showing so have removed again and am about to swap the blade to an unoccupied slot in the shuttle. If that doesn't do it, then I'll remove again and install back into the Icy Dock sold with the enclosure.

Pretty sure it's not blade failure given the long history of disks not showing issues for months now. Really don't want to get out of line, rude, or for this to turn ugly, but you have to understand my side of the situation by now: this has become completely unacceptable. I didn't need this. Any of it. It's wrecked my business and now it's wrecking my evening

Well congratulations. The blade (OWC branded) shipped with the Flex8 that was supposed to have been warranted for 5 years died. I figured it out by swapping slots. First moved missing disk to the fourth slot in the U2 Shuttle, still did not show. Then took everything back apart, moved the Aura Pro IV that was showing from blade slot 2 where it was installed into blade slot 3 where the missing P12 was installed. Swapped positions and both Aura Pro IVs still show but not the original P12 that shipped with the Flex. To make matters worse, I had not backed up the latest files this week (I did everything right for 4 years and the past quarter killed my will) so I lose two projects entirely.  Think I might still be able to retrieve today's shoot from the CFast cards and recover. 

There's absolutely a warranty claim on this as it has failed less than 5 years out but expect more headaches after the last time which took about 4 - 6 hours of phone calls and weeks on end here to get a replacement. My energy is gone. Either this will be made right promptly and painlessly or I'll just move on from OWC. 

Guess I'll get in bed now with lost projects and on an empty stomach. 

Last attempt: installed the P12 back into the original Icy Dock which is how the unit was sold to me. Nope. Disk won't show. It doesn't really matter if it was software or hardware related. I've been through too much with the combination of OWC and Apple the past few months as my business died right after hemorrhaging about $15,000 on computers, disks and lighting to pretend anymore. I was grateful time and time again. The perfect storm let me down. Not the way I wanted the business to die and story to end. I'm gonna have to move onto a different equipment vendor or different backup system. 

Not trying to be belligerent or rude but have decided no one's going to ruin my night after all and that I've earned the right to be brutally frank. Just found  a MacRumors thread that regrettably indicated a lot of user issues with OWC SSDs. If so, I don't even know if I want a warranty replacement on the blade that was working fine before I left to go to the store, and died upon returning. Any drive can fail but the whole was more than the sum of the parts between everything that went wrong, the UI bug (the sole reason I hemorrhaged even more money on those Western Digitals trying to fix things myself by spending ever increasing amounts of money), ending with the P12 failure.

I had the YouTube video online about how great OWC was and how excruciating the experience with Apple had been by comparison. But it was too late. Viewership was completely gone by then so I pulled the video offline in case it was screwing the keywords and SEO up on the channel. The next videos went out to even worse numbers. I would have not done a thing to hurt a fly or harm anyone else's business. But the perfect storm very much so damaged mine. 

I only started working on it in August 2019 and only wrote 1500 pages of life's writings, thankfully those all backed up and offsite in multiple counties and states. But no one can stop producing content for as long as this cost me in time (and money), and still expect things to work out upon returning to your audience. There was virtually no one left to return to. So the entire ordeal hurt me pretty badly. 

@guitarflex 

I can try to expedite a warranty claim if it is applicable, post the serial number of the blade.
We are the top seller of blades in the Mac Marketplace, so it is no surpise that there are also negative comments. Our blades are made by one of the largest manufacturers in the world who supplies many major companies you are familiar with. Our value-add is ensuring these blades are MacOS compatible and spending countless hours identifying and helping fix firmware issues that arise.

One thing I noticed is sometimes blades that are 100% failed "come back" after 24 hours without power.

Warranty is applicable because the blade was sold in the Flex8 in April 2021, warranted for five years. See the serial number and photograph of the blade below. I appreciate your thoughts but at this point an apology along with your explanation would have been nice. The power supply fan had indeed died in the original Flex, but I only found out for myself upon receiving the replacement. Phone support didn't think it was a problem but it was (the replacement unit PSU fan spins, the other one no longer did). The buggy UI issues. Now the 4 year old blade dying suddenly at once with absolutely no warning sign (SoftRAID in fact had ranked the blade with 97% life remaining a month or two ago). And I took OWCs side when the case was made that the original issue was a problem with Apple. I don't doubt the complexity of systems or the inability of anyone myself included to have all the answers. I'd appreciate an expedited warranty claim. Blade serial number, photo, and original sales invoice attached below.

Blade serial (also shown on picture): 2101080060456

@guitarflex 

I wish I could but no one can easily predict failure on flash media. We added a couple additional tests, but its too new still to have a prediction method like on disk drives, where it is physical media and easy to get a correlation.

Imagine something simple like a electronic radio/music system, where the receiver fails. Its "sudden", out of nowhere. Such electronics last a long time, as the circuitry is much "slower" than leading edge computer components, where signals are in the Gigahertz range.

Sometimes NVMe slowly show failure symptoms, but generally, they work, until they do not. And the fact that TRIM "scatters" the data around in the background makes them hard to recover data from. the good news is in general, NVMe last much longer than disk drives, but they are not invulnerable.

Failure of any storage electronics is frustrating, I get it, having had drives and media fail multiple times over the past 40 years. Which is why I learned to have multiple backups whenever possible. I understand your frustration at all these issues caused a lapse, so at the worst time, a drive failed, ouch.

I will see about starting an RMA for you on Monday. I do not deal with RMA's, but will contact the right people to get it going.

@softraid-support Thank you. Let me know who to follow up for with an RMA. Since you offered to get the process started I'll go through you, just update me with what comes next and if they need contact information you don't presently have for me, let me know and I will provide. 

I'm assuming they'll need the dead NVMe back which is fine. But assuming so, my only request will be that they either physically destroy the disk for me after confirming it is a dead NVMe, or ship it back to me to be destroyed. Realistically no financial data is on the disk but for propriety of business property, I don't want it being stolen out of a dumpster, revived by data specialists and next thing I know my work is stolen by someone else much higher up the food chain leaving me powerless. I'd rather just have the blade destroyed as long as the data can't be retrieved. (last chance at retrieval will be trying the blade tomorrow PM as it's now been off for 24 hours).

@guitarflex 

I put the request to be sure the disk is wiped into your RMA request.

Note: Totally failed disks like this, you absolutely cannot recover data from (except perhaps with a clean room), but I don't know what is done with them. Perhaps shipped to the manufacturer for recycling....

@softraid-support Thanks again, I did receive the email and am about to reply to it. Just double-checked only because you said that (rarely) "one thing I noticed is sometimes blades that are 100% failed "come back" after 24 hours without power" --  verdict remains the same. This NVMe is dead. 

Long-shot but any chance that the other disks not showing up randomly at times mystery was related to/a warning sign of the SSD on it's deathbed? Just thought about the possibility since when this blade died, my immediate assumption was that it was just another random disks not showing issue that a restart would solve. Now thinking back on it, I'm wondering "what are the odds." Any chance that maybe a blade on the way out could have taken things offline downstream prior to the blade finally dying itself? 

@guitarflex 

I believe the blades are independent generally, but will ask around...

@softraid-support thanks, getting the return setup with support today. I appreciate it. 

In the RMA email it has some links to data recovery centers. I've made peace with losing the data but wasn't sure from your words before if when you said "Note: Totally failed disks like this, you absolutely cannot recover data from (except perhaps with a clean room)" were you referring to end user-recovery, or a more conclusive, "it's not even worth trying with a data-recovery service." If there was a chance I might reach out to the recommended centers linked to in the RMA email, but I'm going to trust whatever you say about whether or not that's even worth trying. So if it's a 100% no go I won't waste the time.

@guitarflex 

Drive Savers is the one place that could perhaps recover the data, but is expensive to do so, as it requires a clean room and very specialized equipment (I believe they have the ability to move the flash media onto a different board) Drive Savers will give you a free quote.

Still checking on a recommendation on the other blades, should be today.

@guitarflex 
I would try to RMA all 4 blades, to get the other 3 with firmware updates, which I believe there are for your blades. It may help with the disks disappearing issues.

@softraid-support just saw this a couple days later -- have not yet sent back the dead NVMe blade but was going to begin the process, as I already received the RMA for the confirmed dead blade......

Can you do me a favor and vouch for me that you think an RMA is appropriate for the other blades? I actually only have 3 blades total. The dead one, plus another pair purchased late last November 2024. Will offload and backup the data to some spinners if you can help me with getting an RMA on the other blades.