Help! "Degraded - missing disk" error

Here is the support report.

@peterinjapan 

Did you certify the disks before using them? I does appear that the one disk failed, although we cannot tell accurately what the issue is, as this is USB, which does not transmit SMART data in MacOS.

First step is make sure you are backed up.

I would first try to initialize the disk with SoftRAID. See if it works at all. If it responds to initialize, I recommend "Certify" the disk, which will take 2-3 days, but will tell you if the disk is OK or not.

Any replacement I would also certify.

then initialize the disk, then "add disk".

there is a video to assist:

https://software.owc.com/support/softraid/softraid-instructional-videos/

Look for the replace drive in SoftRAID 7 RAID 5 video, the process is the same with 8.

@softraid-support Thanks for the reply. 

Yes I have a backup, but wiping the disk and starting another 5+ day copy is not what I had on my bingo card of what I wanted to do this week.

By Initialize I assume you mean Erase? Or should I Delete the whole Raid drive and re-create it, which I assume formats all four disks as it creates the Raid 5? In the future, I will Certify all disks before adding a Raid, it would be nice if there was some guidance to do this from the software

@peterinjapan 

Watched the video I linked to. Its only 3 minutes and will give you confidence.

Well, now you (I) have gone and done it. While trying to reformat my disks no the RAID I was trying to fix, I seem to have formatted one of the four disks on my RAID that was serving as a backup. I can't blame you for this...but I do, since trying to get your buggy, frustrating software to work had now seemingly lead to 8 TB of data being lost. It was seemingly my fault for not checking the disks properly, but...fuck.

Can I ask what tools you could recommend to restore any files possible from the disk with 1 of four disks accidentally formatted? The old RAID was two striped RAIDs set up in Mac OS Disk Tools, which were then combined into a striped raid, so the data might still be there. How would I go about restoring this data? Sending it to a professional data broker is not an option as I'm in rural Japan.

@peterinjapan 

That looks like it is in Apple format.

Please attach a SoftRAID tech support file. I can look at options.

This issue sounds eerily similar to my issue in that with every reboot one of my blades will randomly disappear thereby killing a raid partition. I’ve been in contact with support and they explained others are having similar issues.

So I hope this will be addressed with an update soon as my perforce server is offline while I wait.

@jesse-art 

Iys highly unlikely for a random blade to disappear. have you given all your blades "disk labels" in SoftRAID?

Only then do you know if it is a random blade, or the same blade. I would put money on the same blade. Which should be replaced if so.

There is no issue I know of that can cause that, (where a software/firmware update would solve it), this seems like a hardware issue.

@softraid-support Yeah, I went through a whole process of trying to single out a specific blade but could find no consistency.

It's not just one drive. I have multiple OWC drives and they all started randomly disappearing blades. Different ones with every reboot.

I spoke with support a while back and they insisted they were working on a resolution as others have had similar issues but I have heard nothing about it.

I am still plagued by this issue.

Here is the reference number they gave me then:

02611138

@jesse-art 

Give your blades SoftRAID disk labels. Then it is easier to see if it is the same blade or not.

No it would not be "common" for a random blade to eject. Lets see if it is the same one or not.

how oild is your Thunderblade?

@softraid-support The issue has been resolved. It was a bad 4M2 card the has been replaced.