Makes sense. Belkin went from being (in my opinion) a quality dependable brand, to inconsistent/borderline, over the years.

Thanks!

@SoftRAID

I'd say further over the edge presently. I stay away from them. Didn't buy this one, but got it with something, I think. Anyway due to price, people play game with quality. You guys seems to have a good product, BTW. Got a good deal on the one I got, but not cheap. Never been one to skimp on quality, but don't have the time or inclination to build my own as far as T4 goes. Cost of the connector assembly components for small demand (my own use). 

Thanks!

Where did you get your prior cable from? Did it have a Thunderbolt logo on the end? With a number 3/4 also?

Thunderbolt cables are supposed to be "certified, unlike USB cables, where total junk can be sold.

@SoftRAID

Belkin. Need I say more? It has the lightning bolt on it and the name and doesn't carry power fairly small diameter. So it should've worked. But... It's Belkin. 

Where did you get your prior cable from? Did it have a Thunderbolt logo on the end? With a number 3/4 also?

Thunderbolt cables are supposed to be "certified, unlike USB cables, where total junk can be sold.

So far, finding all drives (not just RAID Volumes) on the 6' existing T4 rated cable (can't tell if it's certified, probably not) and daisy chains with or without a screen connected tend to develop serious errors in R/W that they do NOT exhibit in Read mode. That error apparently is causing a slowdown in performance intermittent during those iterations. AJA has a valuable tool which replicates what I'm also seeing in Activity monitor > Disk performance (confirmation).  The other (6TB) RAID is on a separate cable attached to the same hub and shows no such errors.

Gently wiggling one end of the suspect cable while it's connected and the app is running seems to cause the error rates to increase/get worse, while wiggling the other end does not have the same effect... 

Remember as of 13.3, there are no driver updates, that all is controlled by MacOS.

And SoftRAID disks/volumes do not care what driver loads. Unless we make a major change to the SoftRAID disk partition maps, all 8/7/6/5 volumes are forward/backwards compatible with each other. Nothing to worry about.

When we finally add for example RAID 6, old drivers will not mount those volumes. But otherwise, everything is compatible with every other version of SoftRAID. 

Encryption is slow, I agree.

@SoftRAID In reviewing the screenshots I sent you and repeating them, noticing a high error rate on R/W readings (you'll see it in the screenshots). Also found a flaky cable which shows cutting out at any slight wiggling of one end. I proved it's not the port connector on the machine/hub by swapping ports, so before I do anything else, will try a new 40Gbs 6'certified cable to that array. I also notice that the first time I test with AJA Lite, the speed is much more normal (and without errors), but second and later repeats the speed goes WAAAY down. So I'm suspicious. 

Seeing the same high error rate on single drives in the same enclosure in the cable-fed daisy chain. Moreover, as the error rate goes down the speed goes up, AND vice versa!

Remember as of 13.3, there are no driver updates, that all is controlled by MacOS.

And SoftRAID disks/volumes do not care what driver loads. Unless we make a major change to the SoftRAID disk partition maps, all 8/7/6/5 volumes are forward/backwards compatible with each other. Nothing to worry about.

When we finally add for example RAID 6, old drivers will not mount those volumes. But otherwise, everything is compatible with every other version of SoftRAID.

Encryption is slow, I agree.

I do not have enough experience to recommend anything else, no. Sorry for this.

I guess restoring is the only way.

@SoftRAID Hindsight being what it is, should've tested without encryption first. I did test the array before updating, but did not test after upgrading, before encrypting. Cart before horse, apparently. Hope somebody learns from this. Lots of moving parts. Up to 40% (not 60+ write speed reduction is what I hear.

On an external drive with existing 7.6 driver, the driver seems to remain as-is until you update the app. At least that's what happened to me. While as you said, the internal drive and all new arrays added becomes updated to the new driver. Do I have that correctly?

Encrypting and then Decrypting did several things that were bad:

• Takes a long time both ways. 
• Encrypting the data en situ was REALLY long.
• The shortest way would've been encrypt an empty array>restore the data>install the new driver/RAID 8.0 app.

I do not have enough experience to recommend anything else, no. Sorry for this.

I guess restoring is the only way.