Ventura Forum - SoftRAID Forum

Verify disks

TheNightRunner — Fri, 19 Jan 2024 09:18:41 +0000

I verified the 4 disks in my RAID setup and got an error on one of the disks ("This disk hung during a read") even though no errors are reported on the left panel.

What should I make of this?

2369

Thanks, Alexandre

Full Mac restoration with a Time Machine backup on a SoftRAID drive?

SkippingRock — Wed, 17 Jan 2024 21:18:20 +0000

Hello, one thing that is not clear to me. Your documentation says that SoftRAID is great for Time Machine backups.

But because the SoftRAID application is required to mount the drive, how could you use Time Machine to restore your Mac?

My logic is telling me that this is actually not possible, and Time Machine is limited to only being able to restore files or folders from the backup and not a full drive restoration.

Am I correct?

If so, then this page really needs to be updated with this caveat:

https://softraid.com/support/faq/can-i-use-softraid-with-time-machine/

A main reason that I purchased this OWC RAID was to be able to have a reliable backup and to be able to restore my Mac if a macOS upgrade ever went bad and I needed to revert to an earlier macOS version. The fact that a SoftRAID drive can't be mounted as a boot drive is telling me that the SoftRAID drivers can't be loaded in Apple Software Restore feature.

If I'm wrong, please tell me how we can do this. If not, let us know too… in either way the support page should be updated to show you how you can do a full restore, or that you can't.

Thanks.

com.softraid.driver.SoftRAID (7.0.1)

SkippingRock — Wed, 17 Jan 2024 18:47:59 +0000

hello I was trying to see if I had and 3rd Party K-extensions installed.

I ran in Terminal the following command:

kextstat | grep -v com.apple

What I got back is:

Index Refs Address            Size       Wired      Name (Version) UUID 
  276    0 0                  0x1b42     0x1b42     com.softraid.driver.SoftRAID (7.0.1) 03EA87D9-D972-3887-8AB6-5A41F793F337 <21 5 4 3>

I have a newer version of the SoftRAID app installed on my computer.

Is com.softraid.driver.SoftRAID (7.0.1) still supposed to be installed?

Could it be conflicting with my newer SoftRAID app?

How do I safely remove com.softraid.driver.SoftRAID (7.0.1) if I am allowed?

Cheers and thanks

Do I need to upgrade to MacOS Ventura SoftRAID 7.5?

PAFER — Thu, 28 Dec 2023 10:07:45 +0000

Good morning and Merry Christmas, first of all :)

I have a need to install the latest Adobe applications, I need to have Ventura installed on my MacBook Pro 16'' Intel 2019, internal Apple 4TB SSD.

I now have Monterey 12.7 installed with no problem with a 40 Tb ThunderBay 4 (X4 Toshiba Enterprise 10 Tb HDD hard drives) connected by Thunderbolt3 and RAID5 with SoftRAID 7.5 license , which I need to upgrade .... On the TB4 there are three volumes, two of 5 and 10 TB HFS format, and one of 15 TB APSF for timeMachine security.

My questions is:

If I want to install Ventura (latest version 13.6.3), Is it safe and will I have no problems with SoftRAID 7.5?
Do I need to upgrade and pay for SoftRAID to the latest version 7.6.1?
Do you recommend it?
I'm so sorry, but I don't have much confidence in spending $80 again on a supposedly "updated" program whose quick installation guides have the old icons volumes SoftRAID and describe the version from quite a few years ago (exactly, the year pdf is 2017), SoftRAID 6....

2340

Is this correct? ...maybe I'm confused and when I pay and upgrade, the quick install guides and manuals will also be updated to the version you download, version 7.6... Is this as I am saying?

Can you help me and explain these doubts please?

THANKS IN ADVANCE!!

Best wishes!

7.6 Driver?

Blockheads88 — Tue, 12 Sep 2023 23:31:23 +0000

Hi I just upgraded to version 7.6 but I notice there was no driver update? It shows v 7.6 with Driver 7.5.

In the past every upgrade also upgraded the driver. I didn't see anything in the release notes and wanted to make sure I wan't missing anything..

Time Machine not working with SoftRAID RAID5 volumes?

ECJohansen — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 14:31:22 +0000

Before I posted I did a search since I'm new to the forums, so I apologize if this topic has been covered elsewhere.

I've been using SoftRAID for years, since the Version 4 days. Mark, thank you.

-------------------

Anyhow, I'm trying to setup Four 8TB drives. These are Seagate ST8000DM008.

The intent is simply to make them a RAID5 and use them as a Time Machine drive. SoftRAID has verified the drives. SoftRAID has successfully created the RAID5 volume of 24TB's.

The problem is Time Machine, when trying to "prepare" it for usage, freezes. I've done this three times now. I've had to force-quit System Preferences each time. After doing so, the volume is no longer in HFS+ format, but instead "blank". I have to have SoftRAID delete the Volume and then re-create the volume.

I'm using a MacStudio M2 Ultra, running MacOS Ventura 13.5.1.

Any suggestions?

After macOs update Volume read_only

robodean — Tue, 29 Aug 2023 20:32:50 +0000

This is actually not he first time this has happened:

After just updating macOS to 13.5.1, one of my SoftRaid volumes is not set to read-only.

And I cannot repair using DiskWariior....because it is set to Read-Only by macos itself.

The last time I fixed this, I moved ALL the content to another drive then re-created the Volume.

But this took many, many hours. And for part of that it, was all on a non-redundant drive.

And it is the same volume and drive as before.

So...is there no way to get macos to make it read-write again?

sincerely, tumbling into despair...

Thunderbay Mini (TB2) RAID 4 suddenly won't mount

rnb2 — Sat, 19 Aug 2023 18:37:21 +0000

I have an M2 Mac mini acting as a home server, and have two OWC RAIDs connected - an 8TB 4M2, and a 4TB Thunderbay Mini Thunderbolt 2. Everything has been working fine for well over a month, but suddenly the RAID 4 in the Thunderbay won't mount. The RAID is 3x1TB Crucial MX500, with the parity on ½ of a 2TB Crucial BX500 (everything formatted APFS). I set it up this way because I had the BX500 on hand, and it is fairly notorious for awful performance for sustained writes, but I figured it should be able to handle parity data on a RAID that doesn't actually change much - it's largely an archive, plus my iTunes library of music and movies (I occasionally buy new movies, but not much else).

The other half of the BX500 is dedicated to iCloud caching (for software updates and iCloud data), and it mounts without issue, so the enclosure is still working. All four slots light up on system or enclosure restart, and there are no errors in SoftRAID 7.5, including with the individual disks. When I try to mount the RAID, the vertical progress bar in SoftRAID gets halfway, then stops, and the RAID fails to mount, but with no clues as to why.

Fortunately, I do have a nightly backup of everything on a 4TB hard drive, and I have a second offsite backup drive that is up to date, so I can nuke the RAID and start over, but I'm hesitant to do that without knowing why the current setup stopped working.

Slow encrypted SSD RAID5

mwob — Wed, 16 Aug 2023 23:40:38 +0000

I set up a new volume using 4 SSD drives within an OWC enclosure. It's attached by thunderbolt to a Mac Studio Ultra running MacOS 13.4. I'm using SoftRAID 7.5 XT license that came with the enclosure. Formatted as APFS the RAID 5 reads and writes at over 850 MB/s, which is fine. However, formatting the volume as APFS encrypted slows performance to < 350 MB/s (often less than 300 MB/s). I'm using Black Magic Speed Disk Test and these numbers are for the 1 GB stress test only.

I generally like to have all my volumes encrypted but this performance is horrible. As a comparison, my Pegasus3 enclosure with spinning HDDs runs APFS encrypted with speeds of 1200 MB/s write and 550 MB/s read on the 1 GB stress test. What's the status of better support for encrypted drives using SoftRAID and MacOS Ventura? Thx.

3.5" HDD Drives Are Slow In Mac Finder & App Menus

Justin Perkins — Mon, 14 Aug 2023 01:44:52 +0000

I was one of the people who battled the issue where certain 4M2 SSD mounted in the Mac Pro were preventing the new 2023 M2 Mac Pro from booting.

That issue appears to be behind us now but now that I'm using this machine more, I'm noticing that my external 3.5" drives that are in a Thunderbay 8 are REALLY slow to show files and navigate in the Mac Finder, or if I'm using any app and try to access files on any of my 8 3.5" drives in the Thunderbay 8.

I don't need these files often because they are my old/archived projects and any working projects are on my internal SSD, but it is very annoying and concerning how slow access to the files in the Thunderbay 8 is now. With my 2019 Mac Pro, there was never an issue. I could easily navigate to these files without anything getting hung up.

I don't have these drives set up as RAID, they are just 8 individual 6TB and 8TB drives in my Thunderbay 8.

Are there any setting in the SoftRAID app that would be causing these drives to be extra slow to load and navigate files? They are 3.5" HDD and not SSD so I know they're not as fast as SSD, but something is causing a MAJOR lag when I try to navigate files. More than one would reasonably expect.