[Sticky] macOS 13 (Ventura) public beta

@mrfearless47 

First thing to try next is get an old disk and put it in your enclosure and create a new SoftRAID volume on it. See if that works normally. (so this is not a directory issue of some kind, and to see if this is an issue the apps have with SoftRAID. Then of course a second install of ventura that is "clean" to make sure your ventura is not broken in some way.

If it is a "generic" issue, it may be the way these apps call the volume that is breaking. If any of these apps have a free trial, maybe we can test it in our office, if it is simple enough to do. I am out of the office for a week, so would have to ask someone to do the checking.

@softraid-support I've reinstalled Ventura Beta 11.  No changes in behavior.  I also am creating a SoftRaid volume on a drive that I had previously used for something else (also a non-RAID but SoftRaid created drive) so that I can copy the image folder and all subfolders to it from one of the 4-drive RAID 5 arrays.  I'll test this and see what happens.

But, I did find out something curious this morning.  I also have a 2020 i9 Intel iMac that also uses OWC arrays for similar purposes.  Although it doesn't have the volume of files I have on my Mac Studio, it has a large enough image folder(s) to find out if the problem persists.  That machine also is running Ventura Beta 11 and SoftRAID 6.3.2 beta 11.  I don't experience the same problem with any of the same programs as on my Mac Studio.  Either the folders aren't big enough for this to happen (although 30,000 RAW images and all their edited forms should still tax the system).

This actually suggests there might be an issue limited to the Apple Silicon, although I have no idea why.  Since this has become a persistent problem on my primary machine (yes, I know better than to run beta software on production machines, but the pieces of software for which the problem occurs are not mission critical in any way), and I have many backups of the whole system drive (and I think that may be where the problem lies), I may take the machine down to bare metal, do a clean install of Ventura and then migrate my apps back from a backup created this morning.

I have reported this to Apple, but without an error log more significant than what I posted here, I'm not expecting miracles.

@mrfearless47 

So this appears to be a issue with very large folders? I can bring our engineering to mention this to Apple in a future meeting, so they are aware. However, my guess is that this was the last Ventura beta before 13.0 release, as it is already mid October.

@softraid-support Thanks.  I have attached another log file that may be of interest.

@mrfearless47 

I don't see the attachment, but it may not be useful anyway. What may be helpful, is a "get info" on the volume. Number of files and space used, may help us try to reproduce this.

Are there any "finder" issues, or is it only with certain apps? It would be helpful if you reached a certain number of files, then for instance, opening folders was slow/incomplete, etc.

@softraid-support There are 3.58 TB of files on the affected drives.  I’m guessing somewhere in the neighborhood of between 300-400k files.

@softraid-support 407,000 files to be precise.

What we can try to do is generate a file set of random files like this and see if it gets any particular issues in Ventura.

Thank you for this beta and the work put into it.  I was having trouble with JBOD RAID I used in MacOS Disk Utility.  Any JBOD I created with that in Monterey would show one drive missing or damaged when I upgraded to Ventura 13.0 Beta (22A5373b).  I had the same trouble in earlier betas of Ventura.  

So I went looking for another solution and saw SoftRAID.  Thank you for the trial so we can see if it works.  So far it is doing better than Disk Utility for me since I couldn't even create a new JBOD using Disk Utility, it would still show one of two drives missing/damaged.  Yet I was able to create a RAID0 of the same two 6TB drives with your software.  It's still writing to the drives now trying to clone to them using Carbon Copy Cloner.  Seems to be working fine.  

I'm using a 2018 Mac mini 3.6ghz i3.  My drives are in a StarTech 4 bay USB 3 dock that is hooked to my Mac mini using USB C to the thunderbolt port.  The drives are two 6TB WD Blue.  I will be purchasing soon as I see if this completes the clone and works but it's looking great so far.  Thank you for the work put into getting this to work with Ventura.  

Getting ready to try Ventura and I see the SofRaid beta I downloaded is labeled SoftRaid 7.0b18.  Is Ventura support going to require a paid-for upgrade from SoftRAID 6.3?

@kaijujoe66 

We are moving to a warranty/support system. Upgrades during hardware warranty or under a support contract (after warranty expiration) are free. Details coming.

@softraid-support Ok this is news.  I know good software requires economic support and I am eager to learn about the new pricing / paid support structure.  Will SoftRaid 6.x support Ventura or is 7 going to be required?

So, with Ventura out today, what is the current status of SoftRAID?  Does it work with Ventura?  If so, what is the link to the version of SR that works with Ventura?  if not, when will it work with Ventura?

When and where can we expect to see such details?

Seperately, would it be possible to confirm something for me? I bought a ThunderBay 4 two years ago, it's out of warranty — am I just gonna have a brick if I upgrade to Ventura and don't cough up the dough for the next version of SoftRAID?

@kaijujoe66 

Yes, Ventura requires version 7, as we had to rewrite the base driver code.

I do not know how pricing will be set yet, but I do know anything under warranty is supported. And so anyone who buys a new unit every three years of so, will have a perpetual license in effect, for all their enclosures on that computer.