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

@softraid-support 6.0.4 b5 gives this error:

RAID Level Not Supported

You are trying to use a RAID level which is not supported by your SoftRAID license. The SoftRAID Lite license only supports stripe (RAID 0) and mirror (RAID 1) volumes.

I went ahead and bought the license (SoftRAID 6 XT for OWC Enclosures), but you can't enter the serial number in the beta... downgraded to 6.0.3, entered the license and then uninstalled and reinstalled the 6.0.4 b5 and still get this error.

@rkeefer

You need to upgrade your license to a 6.0 license. Go here to do that:

https://software.owcdigital.com/softraid-upgrades/

@softraid-support It has been upgraded to 6. On the URL you sent, it only has the option for SoftRAID 6 XT to Pro Upgrade

@rkeefer

I get it, I need to check the beta again.

We added the code for SoftRAID Lite, but the beta should be full functioning. We will update the beta if this is a bug.

@softraid-support OK, in the meantime, I went ahead with 6.0.4 b5 and formatted the drive as APFS through SoftRAID and made it a RAID 1 volume. Testing a Time Machine backup in that mode. I realized everything done to this point has been RAID 5, which is what I want, but want to rule out that it's not an issue with RAID 5.

@rkeefer

Should work. If not, we can help investigate as it works on clean systems.

@softraid-support So far so good, but the failure usually has come at the 99% mark:

@rkeefer

Let me know.

@softraid-support No luck, still the generic Mac OS Notification: BACKUP NOT COMPLETED - Time Machine couldn't back up to "%volume_name%"

Ideas:

Do you have another startup volume, that you can start from and run Disk Utility "first aid"?

I don't know why your Time Machine is not working.

@softraid-support I've given up on Time Machine. I'm just going to use a combo of Carbon Copy Cloner and CrashPlan to do my backups. Time Machine disabled. 🤣