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Softraid Raid 5 and Lightroom Catalogs

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(@malux)
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Has anyone had an issue using Raid 5 with Lightroom Classic Catalogs?  I've had two different customer service folks warn against opening a lightroom catalog from a raid 5 volume.  The recommendation was to use Raid 4 because using Raid 5 with Lightroom classic is a "ticking time bomb" with the potential of causing the volume to crash.

I can't find anyone who has ran into this issue...

 
Posted : 13/10/2020 4:59 pm
(@softraid-support)
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Over the years, I have had a couple users complain about Lightroom. But I cannot point to anything specific. If anyone runs into this and can help us debug, we would love to and help Adobe get to the bottom of this.This is most likely a bug somewhere. I cannot see how a RAID 4 would be better/different, as what is "under" a RAID volume is invisible to Lightroom.

 
Posted : 14/10/2020 11:14 am
(@photomatty)
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So...I just had this problem happen.

Now you know it is true.

I am using a Thunderbay 4 (thunderbolt 2) RAID 5 setup (24 TB total).

I had been using both Lightroom and Capture One.  Sometimes I work in Lightroom Classic from my internal HD, and sometimes from a separate Raid 0 drive, and then I move the files over to my RAID 5 drive (and backup to a dual archive drive setup).

Anyhow...I was unaware of this issue, until last week when I needed to work on some images in Lightroom that had already been moved onto the RAID 5 setup.

After shutting down, I restarted the next day only to find that my RAID 5 (24TB) drive was "out of sync" and needed to be rebuilt...but, it would not mount.  I let it run for 4 days straight, thinking it would re-build and remount (duh).

Today I called OWC, and the support tech Darrin, advised me to buy DiskWarrior, and run a repair. He asked me if I had attempted to open a Lightroom catalog on that drive (saying that could have caused the problem)...and Yes, I had.

Anyhow

IT WORKED!

There were some issues getting the Disk Warrior to install (there's a random OS glitch in High Sierra if you have any custom settings on a Wacom Tablet, Mouse or Trackpad which will cause the "Allow" button in the System Preferences > Security & Privacy to not work.  The workaround was to disable all the custom settings on the Wacom Tablet, and then use the Keyboard...hitting the TAB key...until the "Allow" button was highlighted and press the space bar).  Then it worked, and I could install DiskWarrior.

Whew.

 

Anyhow, after the DW repair, I was able to remount the 24TB drive, and now it's restoring properly, where I can use the drive at the same time.

I was really starting to worry I'd have to pay to have 24TB recovered.  Ouch.

This post was modified 3 years ago by photomatty
 
Posted : 17/09/2021 8:40 pm
(@softraid-support)
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@photomatty

So glad Disk Warrior repaired your volume.

I wish I had a test case where we could run Lightroom and show a way to end up with corruption. Its not we do not believe it is possible, but without a reproducible test case, it is impossible to report this to Adobe. (I am confident this is a Lightroom issue, but if we could reproduce it, we would install a driver trace to see what is actually going on.

 
Posted : 17/09/2021 10:04 pm
 Rupp
(@rupp)
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I'm moving to a new computer, and I will be improving my wife's setup. I noticed this thread and became concerned (especially considering my massive investment in Thunderbay enclosures and disks). 

 

Me: Now using a 2021 16" MacBookPro, M1, Monterey. I use Lightroom Classic for organizing, as well as for editing along with Photoshop, OnOne, etc. As this computer has a 4TB internal drive, I'm planning to keep about 1-1.5 TB of photos internally, backed up to a RAID (4 6TB disks, Thunderbay [Thunderbolt 3], SoftRAID Pro), with that backed up to a 3 Mirror set with 1 16TB disks stored off site (Thunderbay 4 (TB2). I have a few TBs of old video which I plan to keep on the RAID, along with backups of all my photos and other documents. I was, until I read this thread, going to use RAID5 for speed. Should I not? Should I use RAID10? If all 4 disks are in the same inclosure, does this really reduce the risk, or improve my scheme?

 

Spouse: She has an iMac circa 2015 with a "hybrid" 2TB internal. She mostly uses "Photos" but I hope to move her to LightroomClassic. I was planning to give her one of my Thunderbay 4 enclosures (Thunderbolt 2), set her up with a RAID5, then back up to a 2 disk RAID1. She could probably benefit from a little extra speed. Is a RAID5 just a bad idea? 

 

Thanks.

 
Posted : 13/12/2021 10:01 am
(@softraid-support)
Posts: 8005
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@rupp 

RAID 5 is great. What you are reading here is a bug that affects a small amount of users on M1. It is avoidable. You can also set up as RAID 4, which avoids this and is effectively the same as RAID 5.

RAID 10 is more recoverable if there is a problem, but RAID 4/5 are quite a bit faster, and have higher capacity.

 
Posted : 13/12/2021 8:37 pm
 Rupp
(@rupp)
Posts: 17
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@softraid-support 

Thank you for getting back. 

 
Posted : 14/12/2021 2:31 pm
 Rupp
(@rupp)
Posts: 17
Eminent Member
 

@softraid-support 

Sorry, I should have mentioned this in the "thank you" post. I'll go ahead and try RAID4 on my m1max notebook. I will be sure to back it up to the three drive mirrored set.

 

As for my spouse, using the late 2015 iMac, recoverability is key. I'm tempted to give her a RAID10 on the Thunderbay 4 (Bolt 2) backed up to a pair of drives on a Thunderbay IV (T-Bolt 1) on the same channel. I think it's OK to daisy chain those if I keep the T-Bolt 2 drive first in the chain? If she gets an M1 (which I hope she will) I'm thinking in might be easier to migrate data and then rethink the RAID when she will have a 2TB or bigger internal SSD. Make sense?

 

Finally, with one or two enclosures, but no RAID between enclosures, will she need SoftRAID Pro or is the simpler version fine?

 

Thank you again.

 
Posted : 14/12/2021 2:59 pm
(@softraid-support)
Posts: 8005
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@rupp 

XT is fine, you really only need it for a 16 drive RAID 0 or 8 drive across two enclosures.

Your M1 plan is fine. If you are on RAID 10, there won't be the panic to worry about, either.

To give advance notice, there is a Monterey bug that wakes drives from sleep constantly. It is easily reproducible with only Apple volumes, nothing to do with SoftRAID. Several users complained and I reproduced it on 3 separate clean install computers, including M1's.

 
Posted : 14/12/2021 9:59 pm
 Rupp
(@rupp)
Posts: 17
Eminent Member
 

@softraid-support  

I truly appreciate your timely responses. Just let me be sure. I wasn't planning to do RAID10 on the M1, but I certainly could do.

 

Plan on M1 Laptop is: RAID4, backed up to mirror.

Plan for spouse's Intel iMac, now running Monterey (may the gods be kind) would be RAID10. 

If you are suggesting that both might be better RAID 10 (to avoid panic or other issues) could you just confirm that.

 

Happily, I don't have to do backup design every year. Thanks again.

 
Posted : 15/12/2021 8:18 am
(@softraid-support)
Posts: 8005
Member Admin
 

@rupp 

RAID 4 is perfectly fine. RAID 10 is where you want maximum recoverability, the chance that two disks failing at once may still leave your volume mounting (50% of two disk failures will still mount), and where disk space is not at a premium (you lose 50% capacity to parity with RAID 10, RAID 4/5 on 4 disks is 25%)

 
Posted : 15/12/2021 12:09 pm
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