Using Mercury Elite Pro Quad as a Time Machine drive and SoftRAID with BigSur

With Big Sur, Time Machine only works on SoftRAID volumes formatted as APFS .

So delete the volume, create a new one and select APFS as the file system. Then Time Machine will work. I do not think this issue will be fixed by Apple.

Yes, if you re-read my post above, I did eventually reformat to APFS.

It tries its initial backup on the time machine drive, and errors out with the very generic:

Time Machine couldn’t complete the backup to "Drive Name"

An error occurred while copying files.

Within SoftRAID 6 b53 I've been unable to erase or initialize any of the four individual drives to start over fresh/again.

Thanks,

Ryan

@rkeefer

Did you unmount the volumes first from the desktop? SoftRAID UI cannot unmount APFS yet.

@softraid-support Yes. Tried everything again this morning to be sure.

1. Ejected the volume.

2. Deleted the RAID 5 Volume in SoftRAID.

3. Initialized the four drives in SoftRAID.

4. Create new volume in SoftRAID (APFS)

4. Added drive to Time Machine.

5. Tries to do its first backup

6. Fails with a generic message, "Backup Not Completed. Time Machine couldn't back up to 'Volume Name'"

I've got another external drive that it takes turns with. The other drive completes its backups fine, but the SoftRAID volume continues to be able to complete its first backup. 

@rkeefer

Interesting that one volume can complete, another cannot. this indicates that the source volume itself should not be damaged.

Not being a Time Machine expert, its hard to know what is causing this and how to get past this problem.

BTW: to retest, all you need to do is erase the volume in SoftRAID.

What if you erase the volume with SoftRAID, select Time Machine, then restart? then Backup now?

Same result?

The one thing I can think of is if this is a disk issue.

Make sure SMART USB drivers are active via the SoftRAID disk preferences. Shut down. remove ALL USB devices except keyboard/mouse.

Restart. Wait 5 minutes. Plug in your MEPQ and any other devices. This should allow the SMART USB driver to load, hopefully. Look in the disk tiles in SoftRAID. Are any of the disks showing an error condition?

Its worth a try, as I can't think outside of a disk error, why the problem backing up.

Anyone in the forum more of a Time Machine expert?

@softraid-support Sorry, took awhile to get back and try this. It's unable to erase the drive, error is just:

"SoftRAID Error

An error occurred erasing the volume "name". SoftRAID was unable to create a file system on this volume."

I Will work through the SMART steps next. The drives and enclosure are all brand new. I'm not saying drives don't fail out of the box, but still.

@rkeefer

The actual problem is the driver is not loading. Did you "Allow" OWC as an identified developer in System preferences/Security?

@softraid-support Yeah, I did have to go into the security tab and allow them, but still no luck in getting it to run as a Time Machine backup. Should I try making it something other than RAID 5?

@rkeefer

I do not think the volume type is the problem, Time Machine only sees a volume. Try one more time to unmount/delete/create an APFS volume, then when it mounts, does Time Machine ask to add it?

I will assume it does. Then it certainly ought to be able to complete the backup.

@softraid-support Upgraded to v 6.0.1, and now don't have an option to format as APFS at all.

We only offer this when you create a new volume, so delete it create a new volume and select APFS.

@softraid-support That's what I'm attempting to do. No APFS option is available no matter what settings I try for a new volume:

This is our bug. We used a build script that had APFS disabled for 6.0.1. We are releasing 6.0.2 very shortly, which will have APFS available.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

@softraid-support Just upgraded to 6.0.3 (rebooted and allowed the OWC driver in Security) Still not seeing the ability to create an APFS volume from the four drivers.