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

@guitarflex 

Maybe I misremembered the slots that disappeared. I want to put the 7 drive next to the one that was in the top row, either 3 or 4. This way we get the "bad" drive down below and the other side of the mirror next to a drive that is showing up all/most of the time.

I would keep in either top or bottom. Just checking that the power supply can handle 4 drives spinning up, if it cannot spin up all 8.

I recommend a Line conditioner. APS stopped selling their excellent R-1200, so get the Cyber Power line conditioner. For $100, its well worth it.

@softraid-support Thanks. The one in the mirror that was on the top row was Disk 3, so indeed, putting 7 into 4's spot places both mirrors side-by-side.

Would you leave it this way with all 8 drives for awhile? Or move straight away to running with only half the disks for a period of testing?

Hour + phone call with OWC this afternoon. Now it's time to take stock of all my options for resolution. Because it was sold and warranted with 32TB they'd need the enclosure with the disks, but the warranty is good until April 2026. If I just buy another Flex 8 unloaded and install my disks as-is, then obviously another enclosure comes with SoftRAID for 3-years. Theoretically everything is backed up but shipping the current unit with disks and data that could be wiped still makes me think everything should be backed up yet again in-house. Which circles back to maybe I need to just buy another loaded Flex 8, transfer everything onto that, then ship the existing one out for service (and maybe I'll have a working pair for years to come). At this level of storage another loaded Flex is cost-prohibitive for a few more months at least following the severe hole in my bank account from all the other things that came up. (Studio, a set of ARRI lights - 1 of which arrived dead and had to be replaced (that's what you get for a $3000 light!), the cFAST card dying suddenly in early December). I have no idea how this all happened all at once but now it's here to deal with. 

One more lost night but it may have culminated in an answer. Short version is I'm probably going to order a new Flex 8 enclosure (0TB) in the middle of the night. Here's why. 

To which you said:

Posted by: @softraid-support

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SoftRAID shows the disks in real time, as they respond to MacOS. So either the drives are taking more time to spin up (less likely), or the power supply is weaker and taking more time to spin up. Something like that.

@guitarflex 

Make sure you invest in a Line Conditioner if you have not already. They are $100. Cyber Power makes a good one (APC were the best but discontinued)

If you talk to customer service, advance replacement is a service we offer. Whether you buy a new unit, or just want this RMA'd. (Although I would like to see a little more before knowing this unit is faulty). If you are purchasing, order, replace the drives and see how it goes. If all works 100%, then you have a solid replacement on the current. Hard to say what you should do, but if this is hurting your business, then lets go for whatever is fastest for you.

But since this is likely a enclosure unit, you should be able to arrange an advance replacement only on the enclosure. If you want to go that route, let me know if you get pushback.

Its unlikely the power supply damaged the drives. Yes it could have but I tend to think not.

@softraid-support Thanks again, will probably sleep better if I wait until morning to order. For the power conditioner, yes I agree, I'll get one. All the studio (literal, as in recording studio) gear is on a Furman conditioner. My video production/office and music spaces have been separated for a long time but let me know if Furman might be acceptable for a Flex 8. If so, I'll either migrate everything into one system or get a Cyber Power as advised. 

I'm trying to remember exactly what he called it today on the phone but think it was the "Advance Replacement" you mention. But was told that in order to to that, I'd need to purchase the same loaded unit I originally purchased in April 2021. 7 HDD, 1 SSD, 32TB total. So I'm concerned I may get pushback on doing that with the enclosure-only. 

Since my storage needs have expanded (currently have 52TB in the enclosure at the moment), it seems more expedient to just get a bare enclosure and try the disks in that new enclosure. And if I can still get someone to inspect the enclosure-only under warranty, then I don't mind outright buying the new enclosure. But if no one will service it without the disks included, that sort of boxes me back into a corner. I'll wait until light of day to decide but do need to move by light of day. So please do let me know if you have any final advice.

Thanks as always. 

@guitarflex

The Furman's should be fine.

What you would want is a RMA advance replacement.

I think we have enough evidence for that at this point.

@softraid-support Thanks, sent a note to customer/warranty service when I got up at noon (this is my life now). Haven't heard back yet. May call. But also...

Should the fan on the underside of the enclosure be spinning after awhile? Last week I called phone support to specifically ask about that after inspecting it visually with a mirror and flashlight so that I could see while the unit was powered on upright. They said it was not a concern since the power supply just wasn't hot enough yet to turn that fan on. 

When the RAID had to be rebuilt for 7 hours, I checked again around 6 hours into the process. I could feel the circulation from the main fan on the back but light and mirrors don't lie - the underside fan blades by the power supply was not spinning after 6 hours either. 

Posted by: @softraid-support

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@guitarflex

What you would want is a RMA advance replacement.

I think we have enough evidence for that at this point.

3-weeks in we just got an update. After 45 minutes into another phone call with support, an email arrived. The Support Team is making an exception to issue an advanced replacement for the enclosure-only. I think it was your post below that made the difference since the email said that they had reviewed this thread. 

Posted by: @softraid-support

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you should be able to arrange an advance replacement only on the enclosure. If you want to go that route, let me know if you get pushback.

So thank you for that. Without you I wouldn't have even asked and would still be spinning my wheels. 

Now I can get going on setting up some kind of line-conditioning and proceed with purchasing software. Thank you very very much for your help.  

@guitarflex 

You are welcome, hopefully this is the end of the issues!

@guitarflex 

I would defer to customer service, but I believe that additional fan was for cooling things like a PCI card or NVMe blades.

Posted by: @softraid-support

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@guitarflex 

I would defer to customer service, but I believe that additional fan was for cooling things like a PCI card or NVMe blades.

Thanks for the update. I was able to bring that up in the phone call after I posted that above. He asked if the unit was getting unreasonably hot or anything (which it is not) and didn't have a conclusive answer but was not concerned. Combined with your reply, that seems to be okay then! 

I have nothing but pure gratitude for your help and everyone else's at OWC through this. After installing all 8 disks into the new enclosure and starting up to the Studio, two things are now definitive:

(1) Any 16TB Toshiba disk still ejects during sleep. I called Apple to update them on this. That only leaves Apple or Toshiba as the cause. I suspect Apple. 

(2) Upon starting the new Flex 8, I'm at peace to report that there's still no definitive resolution. 4 Disks did not appear in the Disk Column of SoftRAID 8. This was echoed in Disk Utility. But this time instead of freaking out I took a very calculated slow look at everything. No LED disk lights flashing like you'd asked me to check for on the disks that had not appeared. On those disks, there was no activity at all, they simply weren't there. And then I slowly and methodically inspected which disks they were. Disks 2, 3, 4, and 7 were not showing. 

Disk 1 (U2 Shuttle with NVMe storage), Disks 5-6, and Disk 8 did appear.

Having written this down, I thoughtfully ejected the volumes that had mounted, waited a couple minutes and re-started the computer. Then all 8 disks appeared right away.

Disk 7 in the original Flex enclosure contained a 4TB Seagate EXOS shipped with the Flex. That was the disk that did not appear 7 - 10 days ago and broke my RAID 1 mirror. Disk/Bay 7. 

Since then, I swapped the disks as instructed (Disk 7 went to Disk 4's slot if I recall correctly). But now Bay 7 with a new enclosure, a 16TB Toshiba was placed (as I'm currently getting 4 years of DaVinci Resolve projects archived on multiple disks for onsite/offsite). So it wasn't Seagate for Seagate in Bay 7. That slot did not show the disk either time across brands and capacities. 

What would be the odds of four Seagate disks and a fifth Toshiba in the same slots all beginning to fail at the same time? Possible I suppose but realistically what are the odds. I can only think of two remaining variables:

(1) I switched from the original Thunderbolt 3 cable shipped with the enclosure 4 years ago to a set of new OWC Thunderbolt 4 cables in early December (240W/40GB per s). Could it be that the Flex 8/Mac does not like Thunderbolt 4 cables? And yet, I find that even harder to believe than the disks themselves. Because I'd swapped the 2m with a 0.7m cable, I thought I had officially ruled out the cables. But....they were both new Thunderbolt 4 cables. Maybe I should go back to the original Thunderbolt 3 cable and see???

(2) With the exception of the computer crash on the morning of Dec. 5th, every single time in 2025 that disks have not shown, it has been after removing disks (which I first began to do in order to sort out the eject issues), or swapping one disk for another (in the case of installing larger capacities for a backup that had to be done). I'll be curious to see what happens moving forward if I don't remove or install anything and leave everything as-is with disks permanently in the enclosure. 

If there's anything else you can think of worth checking please let me know. 

@guitarflex 

For (1), we did get a report this is being worked on and is likely to be fixed in some future macOS build. Hopefully sooner than later.

Here is what we should do on the disks issue. Since we never ever see this, its either local to you, or specific to your computer.

Next time disks are missing, collect these three files:
Note what you did to trigger this event, if you can.
SoftRAID tech support file
System Report (System Settings/General/About, scroll down, and save)
System Diagnostic report, which is generated from terminal:
sudo sysdiagnose -f ~/Desktop/

Restart, so the disks appear, and immediately collect the same three files.

Lets get them to me via a link. We will review them and see about filing a bug report with Apple. they want steps to reproduce, if you can summarize how you made them not show up (like swapping disk locations, etc.). We will also put some extra effort into trying to reproduce it here.

This reply came in the nick of time. Now my disks simply are not showing at all on the Studio but they are on the Intel MBP running SoftRAID 7.5. Prior to the disks not showing, this was the order of events:

1. Tried creating new volume on 4TB Seagate disk using SR8 on Mac Studio. Noticed that the Largest Free Block only said 18.4 with a dash afterwards. Screen shot attached (edit: Tried, but attachment just shows a huge ? icon so I gave up. Can provide with support files when I know where to send them). Then I noticed the largest free block on ANY Seagate disk showed the same bizarre behavior. This was what damaged the partition map 4-5 days ago when trying to create the new volume. 

2. Strategically began removing variables. First took out the Toshiba 16TB disks so that only 4TB Seagate and the Solid State Storage in Bay 1 was loaded. But the largest free block still said "18.4 -" Then I removed the U2 Shuttle with the NVMe storage, leaving only 4 Seagate disks. Largest free block still said "18.4 -"

Then moved one of the Seagate disks to Bay 5. Largest Free Block still showed "18.4 -" At this point I powered down the Studio.

3. On SoftRAID 7.5 on the i9 MacBook, things were normal. In fact, I was able to create a new "Test Backup Volume" to the disk perfectly successfully. Then I powered the Intel down and went back to the Studio.

4. Upon starting, no disks appeared. Then I collected the three files you asked for and carefully organized them. Attachment coming soon (see question asking if I can email these files directly). Restarted and the disks showed. Generated the next three files as requested. 

5. Only after that, did I look at the disks and volumes (still showing). "Largest Free Block" on any disk (now only Seagates) showed "18.4 -" At this point I powered the Studio back down to check once more on SR7 in the Intel. All went perfectly fine on the old MacBook. 

6. Ever since that moment, now 3 times in a row with the new Flex 8 connected directly to the Studio, no disks have appeared. I have tried re-seating the cable, re-starting like before, and starting from a turned-off "Shut Down" state. Also power-cycled the Flex 8. 

Can you help me to get SR 7.5 on the Studio just to check? I'm beginning to wonder if the "Largest Free Block" issue is a software bug. As for disks not showing, I'm at a loss of what to do now. It's unusable with Apple Silicon this way. Can I email you the support files since they have serial numbers and information I may not want posted on a public forum? My Dropbox is currently full and out of storage.  

@guitarflex 

Couple notes: the SoftRAID version for loading disks/mounting volumes, etc never matters. If MacOS sees a drive, SoftRAID will and vice versa. MacOS mounts volumes, not SoftRAID. So none of that is related to issues. So no worry there.

Also, any MacOS past 13.4 has a "fixed" SoftRAID driver version that will load, regardless of SoftRAID version. that cannot be changed, ever.

I have seen the 18.4 issue on drives before, I cannot remember the cause, I will have to think about it.

Its odd that the correct capacity shows on intel, however.

On 6, when you can power cycle the Flex8 and drives still do not appear, if you plug into the Intel mac, does it mount? (with same cables)

We have fixed the forum, so you can post support files, and they are not accessible except for admins.

wetransfer should work for posting:

wetransfer.com
Click the button that says "I Agree".
Click the "Add your files" button and select the Sysdiagnose files, etc.
Click the ... Button.
Select the "Get transfer link" button.
Click the large "Get a Link" button.
After a short period of time, the wetransfer site will give you a link.
post that link. I won't publish it.