Stupid questions about upgrading

Understood, thanks. The new visit to the Genius bar is about the 'disappearing' RAM. On an interim visit they tried reseating the modules with inconsistent results, so they decided to order in parts to replace the logic board and memory again. 

Regarding the watchdog problem, it's something I can live with if the system can sleep properly. I don't shutdown that often, and if I do I'll unplug the drives after unmounting them before shutdown.

I currently have a Highpoint Hardware RAID 5 array running on an old Mac. The computers days are numbered and I'd like to move this array into an OWC Thunderbay 4 connected to a MacBook Pro running Softraid XT.

My 'stupid question' is will Softraid recognise the existing RAID 5 array, including it's data, if I move all the disks into the OWC Thunderbay and run Softraid?

@graynoise

No, the Highpoint RAID is a proprietary format. The configuration of the partition maps is completely different, so there is no easy way to change this to SoftRAID format. (Its technically possible, but not something we can do)

The disks will work, but you need to backup/restore the data.

My system still suffers from not being able to shutdown properly - the screen goes black but the Thunderbays are still active with their blue lights, even with the single process setting on Softraid. To test the 12 drive limit, I decide to move some Thunderbays to a 'spare' 2014 mac mini that I have. I have the 2014 mini connected via Thunderbolt to the 2018 and the transfers are solid. This 2014 mini on Catalina with SR XT has 3 Thunderbay IV arrays (RAID 5) and reboots fine. However the remaining 2 Thunderbays (RAID 5) on my main 2018 mini (also Catalina) still doesn't shut down, and it's probably a coincidence, but switching the single process setting on Softraid on and off just made one of the TB arrays (RAID 1+0) come up with I/) errors and are labelled 'failed' although I can still read the volume. I'm transferring the data to another drive and then starting over. 

I'm guessing that this must be a problem inherent to the Mac Mini 2018 somehow (like the crappy bluetooth) because the Mini 2014 copes fine with 12 drives. Perhaps it's an issue with the Thunderbolt 3 to 2 connection (genuine Apple adapters). This is the 2018 mini that had a new logic board put in recently) I guess that I have to live with it. Which makes my experiment with the 2014 Mini, a bit of a waste of time.

When is RAID 6 coming by the way please? Will it be able to span 2 Thunderbay 4 enclosures please?

@chobochobo

Don't have a time line on RAID 6 yet.

Don' t use the one IO at a time, there are some bugs introduced there. It was mostly for older systems anyway.

When you shut down, do you see the disks power down one at a time? Do any of the disks take a lot longer?
If you do unmount the volumes first, does it behave correctly?

Cheers. Restarts seem fine, but unmounting doesn't help with 'shutdown' - previously the thunderbays would power down (lights go red) but restart by themselves, rebooting the system, but now in the past week that I've tried, they just never power down. I have left one thunderbay array mounted as programs that sync to folders on that volume (Synology Drive and Google Drive) don't like it if I unmount before rebooting. In the end, I guess it's something to live with. I'll just force power down with the mac mini's power button when the arrays don't power down. I'll get an error message when I restart but I know that no data has been lost.

Cheers. Restarts seem fine, but unmounting doesn't help with 'shutdown' - previously the thunderbays would power down (lights go red) but restart by themselves, rebooting the system, but now in the past week that I've tried, they just never power down. I have left one thunderbay array mounted as programs that sync to folders on that volume (Synology Drive and Google Drive) don't like it if I unmount before rebooting. In the end, I guess it's something to live with. I'll just force power down with the mac mini's power button when the arrays don't power down. I'll get an error message (system restarted due to an error) when I restart but I know that no data has been lost.

Update: so just for the heck of it, I did unmount everything. Thunderbays went to red light after about a minute but went blue (restarted) within ten seconds. Then there was the 'black screen of death' (rather than the pop up message saying that the system restarted due to an error). There was then a sync error with Synology drive - one specific pdf file was now 'locked'. I had to go and manually unlock it to get sync back to normal. 

I need that shoulder shrug emoji here.

@chobochobo

Too bad Disk Warrior is "dead". Its possible there is a directory issue.

Try deleting Spotlight/indexing (System Preferences/Spotlight, exempt this volume, restart, then enable it.)

Maybe it is related to indexing. Could fix this.

Cheers.

Disk Warrior is 'dead'? I almost bought it a couple of months ago.

@chobochobo

I did not notice they did add Big Sur support. my bad. I see there is hope, as there is a mailing list for APFS volumes. That means they must be getting closer to APFS. Apple published the documentation so late, I can understand the issue in getting Disk Warrior for APFS.

I do not want Disk Warrior to disappear, it is too important a product for mac users.

While APFS may take a while, if Alsoft can add Monterey support, even just for HFS, that would keep it up to date. I just missed the Big Sur announcement. Sorry about that.