Apply to be a beta tester for RAID 6 capability

Posted by: @jackklink

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Hi. I've downloaded the beta, but I see that it says "41 days remaining" on it. I have a SoftRAID premium license, but I see the Manage License section of this beta app is disabled. If I move forward with using this beta, will I not be able to access my RAID 6 drive after 41 days?

@SoftRAID Support

I have this same question regarding the time limit on the Beta. I too have a full premium license for 8.6.x, but have been working with the beta since Friday. What is intended to happen when the beta license runs to its end?

Running with 8x 20 TB Seagate Iron Wolf drives in an OWC Thunderebay 8, a 6+ beta RAID has been performing very well. On my system, it tested (using AJA's disk speed tester) ±15-20% faster than a 1+0 RAID, which surprised me. The RAID 6+ also tested faster than RAID 6 by 10% or so. (The system is an M1 Max MacBook Pro 18,2 running Tahoe 26.2)

The RAID has been running continuously since Sunday morning with no issues whatever. Zero errors.

The only issue I've seen with the Beta is a failure at startup which gave the attached error message:
"SoftRAID Error
An internal part of the SoftRAID Monitor has stopped functioning properly. Please quit SoftRAID and relaunch it."

This has happened three times—only happened at boot up, and was resolved by quitting and restarting SoftRAID in all cases.

@filmguy 

When the beta expires, or you get notified a new beta is available, just use the latest version. Expired beta does not affect your volume, just that the beta cannot run.

At the end of this beta cycle (which will be a few months in the future, as it turns out), we hope to have a tool you can use to "convert" the drives to normal SoftRAID format. More details on that much later. But in case we cannot, be prepared to start fresh.

We may have a new beta soon, its being worked on.

Sounds good. Thank you for the info.

The 6+ volume continues to run without issue.

@softraid-support Thanks for getting back with this info. I am still a bit confused. Why can't the beta just last indefinitely (with license) so I don't have to deal with not being able to use the beta on my drive once it lapses if you aren't planning to release an updated beta for a couple months. I am 20 days out from the beta expiring now. I would like to continue using the beta up and until you release it officially out of beta.

We release betas ongoing. Its important that users be forced to move forward. Bugs exist. And a beta must expire. We think 60 days is more than ample for testing, it gives us lots of time for new user available updates.

I just installed the latest version of the beta today and I get this error when I try to open it (this is after I restarted to install updated system extension)

@jackklink 

Here is a workaround.

https://software.owc.com/knowledge-base/softraid-monitor-failed-error-mac/