Advice for Thunderbolt RAID for Mac Mini M1?

[SamB_]

Pro photog here, looking for recommendations for best RAID solution for the M1 Mac Mini.

My thought is to replace my aging Mac Pro (2010) with a maxed out M1 MM and a Thunderbolt RAID5. The 2TB internal SSD would handle active editing, with completed projects moved to the RAID with something like 5 14tb drives, where I might occasionally make further edits (still want speed, but cost/capacity are more important).

I currently have about 30TB of data spread across the existing Mac Pro internal drives (has small SSD boot and scratch disks, the rest large HDDs with a reference-drive 'home' folder). Backups are on an older/slow 5 bay NAS RAID5

I'm not finding any 'Thunderbolt 4' capable RAID enclosures, although Thunderbolt 3 might be just the same speed with regular HDDs running RAID 5 anyway? Also, I want RAID 5 for capacity, but I really don't like 4 bay RAID 5 setups, would rather find a 5 or 6 drive RAID? I'm not the RAID expert though.

Any thoughts/recommendations appreciated. (I am not an expert on the hardware side...)

EDIT: This Terramaster D5 with Thunderbolt 3 seems to be the only hardware RAID enclosure available without drives?

 

[OSB]

TB4 doesn't really add anything to TB3 that's especially meaningful to a RAID enclosure; it's the same maximum throughput outright (40Gb/s), and is largely differentiated by a couple of QOL features, some display capability improvements, and stricter requirements for certification.

Thunderbolt 4 won't be faster than Thunderbolt 3, but better - 9to5Mac

There was much confusion earlier in the year when Intel first touted Thunderbolt 4 as the successor to Thunderbolt 3, implying that it would be faster ...

9to5mac.com

As far as TB3 RAID goes, OWC has a great reputation for quality and "plays nice with Mac". I haven't used it myself, but you might check out this: https://www.owcdigital.com/products/thunderbay-8

 

[jdb8167]

If you get something from OWC that uses SoftRAID be aware that they don't even have released Big Sur drivers yet. The current Beta does work on Intel Big Sur and I'm currently using it without problems but I don't know when the M1 compatible version will be released. Luckily, I don't use RAID on my notebook but I would also find it pretty critical for a mini.

Edit: I should have checked before posting. The latest SoftRAID Beta supports the M1.

SoftRAID Comes the M1 Macs

 

[Mr Screech]

Realize that RAID enclosures with several spinning disks make a lot of noise.
I purchased one a decade ago and stopped using it since the constant noise was unbearable.
Thunderbolt doesn't leave you the option to put it in another room like a NAS would.
I'm hoping for ssd prices to plummet.

 

[SamB_]

If you get something from OWC that uses SoftRAID be aware that they don't even have released Big Sur drivers yet. The current Beta does work on Intel Big Sur and I'm currently using it without problems but I don't know when the M1 compatible version will be released. Luckily, I don't use RAID on my notebook but I would also find it pretty critical for a mini.

Edit: I should have checked before posting. The latest SoftRAID Beta supports the M1.

SoftRAID Comes the M1 Macs

Thanks - I'd really, really like to avoid software RAID. And OWC just doesn't inspire on the software side of things from what I've read.

 

[SamB_]

Realize that RAID enclosures with several spinning disks make a lot of noise.
I purchased one a decade ago and stopped using it since the constant noise was unbearable.
Thunderbolt doesn't leave you the option to put it in another room like a NAS would.
I'm hoping for ssd prices to plummet.

I have an older NAS 5 disk RAID for backup, but for working with the libraries I'd really like something with Thunderbolt 3, hardware RAID, and I'd prefer to buy it without disks as I have a few relatively new 14TB NAS drives I'd like to incorporate into the RAID (probably RAID 5).

But the only options I'm finding for 5 bay RAID enclosures don't offer them without drives (and the drives seem to be priced *really* high. (LaCie Big6, Pegasus).

Until NVME drives get a lot closer to the cost and capacity of HDD's, I'm stuck with spinning discs, unfortunately.

 

[SamB_]

If you get something from OWC that uses SoftRAID be aware that they don't even have released Big Sur drivers yet. The current Beta does work on Intel Big Sur and I'm currently using it without problems but I don't know when the M1 compatible version will be released. Luckily, I don't use RAID on my notebook but I would also find it pretty critical for a mini.

Edit: I should have checked before posting. The latest SoftRAID Beta supports the M1.

SoftRAID Comes the M1 Macs

Relying on an OWC beta software RAID is a no-go. While some seem to like their software, I've read enough negative reviews of their products over the years to be a bit shy, especially anything in beta form.

 

[MyopicPaideia]

Yup. For M1 Machines you are pretty much out of luck right now, good luck finding a 5 bay Hardware RAID enclosure, especially with TB3. Software RAID is usually much better performance-wise than Hardware as well anyway.

I run a LaCie 5Big TB2 enclosure with RAID 5, and it is awesome. Hot-swap drive bays (which I have made use of twice during its 6 year life) and being able to edit video directly have been great. But it doesn’t work with my new M1 Mac mini yet...

I actually got a response from LaCie, but there is no ETA for release of M1 compatible drivers yet.

This, combined with the fact that Bluetooth just completely dies at random even with 1st party accessories, like the Apple Magic Keyboard and Apple Magic Mouse 2 and Apple Magic Trackpad 2, makes the new M1 Mac mini super frustrating and not even useable for the main task I bought it for, editing native Apple format video content...

Sad.

 

[jdb8167]

Relying on an OWC beta software RAID is a no-go. While some seem to like their software, I've read enough negative reviews of their products over the years to be a bit shy, especially anything in beta form.

Yeah I wouldn’t rely on Beta software for anything important. I use it on a 4 drive enclosure and it has been rock solid but my usage is for backups and offloading large media files backed up in other locations. A failure is just annoying, not fatal.

I’ve had nothing but good results from softRAID though. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it for any intended use. I’ve used it for the last 6 years without a single issue.

 

[pldelisle]

Why not QNAP ? https://www.qnap.com/solution/thunderbolt3-nas/en-us/

Best Thunderbolt 3 NAS with RAID solution I know. I think you can even add NVME drives as caching (depending of the model), which is by far a really nice addition when working directly on the NAS over Thunderbolt. You can fully exploit the bandwidth of the Thunderbolt bus.

BTW, hardware RAID is of the past. Most RAID now is software. A lot less pain in the a** when something fails.

 

[OSB]

Yeah I wouldn’t rely on Beta software for anything important. I use it on a 4 drive enclosure and it has been rock solid but my usage is for backups and offloading large media files backed up in other locations. A failure is just annoying, not fatal.

I’ve had nothing but good results from softRAID though. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it for any intended use. I’ve used it for the last 6 years without a single issue.

I know softRAID / OWC claim significant speed advantages over just using Apple's own RAID implementation. Has your experience borne that claim out?

 

[jdb8167]

I know softRAID / OWC claim significant speed advantages over just using Apple's own RAID implementation. Has your experience borne that claim out?

I switched to it when Apple deprecated their own software RAID solution. They eventually brought it back but I saw no reason to switch again. I've never really tried to get max speed but I really like the flexibility that softRAID gives over Apple's solution. I set up as RAID 5 and have had no trouble.

 

[jimcamel]

July 25 - 2021. I have restored the speed on my 20TB 5BIG by converting the whole box to OWC SoftRaid PRO. After LaCie fixed the driver and allowed the drive to mount, I was getting speeds in the order of 49 MB/sec write and 225 MB/sec read ..... after converting to SoftRaid, with a the RAID loaded to about 75% of its capacity I am getting speeds in the 300 / 500 range.

Reply if you want details.

jc

 

[CasablancaDR]

July 25 - 2021. I have restored the speed on my 20TB 5BIG by converting the whole box to OWC SoftRaid PRO. After LaCie fixed the driver and allowed the drive to mount, I was getting speeds in the order of 49 MB/sec write and 225 MB/sec read ..... after converting to SoftRaid, with a the RAID loaded to about 75% of its capacity I am getting speeds in the 300 / 500 range.

Reply if you want details.

jc

Hello Jim,

Would really love to know how you did it cause so far my Lacie 12big is unusable on my M1 iMac !

 

[H_D]

Same here. LaCie 6big went to 30 write / 270 read after moving it to the MacStudio. Considering that M1 architecture is two years old now and Seagate is not some small developer this is rather terrible. I hesitate to switch from hardware raid to a software raid & from raid 6 to 5 though… I hope LaCie will fix this.

 

[Kris Kelvin]

I've recently got my hands on a 12big 48TB, connected to a Mac Studio running macOS Ventura 13.2 and LaCie Raid Manager 2.9.4.437 (which isn't downloadable directly from LaCie, but is offered within the Raid Manager App once launched).

• Without a driver installed, the volume wasn't mounted.
• With the most recent LaCie Raid Manager installed (and allowing the Extension from `Seagate Technologies LLC`, but still having Kernel Extensions disabled), it connected via USB 2.0 (480Mbits) and speeds were in the 35MB/s range.
• With the most recent LaCie Raid Manager installed and having Kernel Extensions enabled, speeds increased to 700MB/s read and 1700MB/s write on an uninitialized RAID 5 (12 x 4TB).
  So for the time being, it works fine. At least on macOS Ventura.

However, LaCie's driver is using IOSCSIParallelInterfaceController, which is deprecated since macOS 12 and may or may not be available in macOS 14. Since Seagate took 2 years to come up with a driver that works with Apple Silicon, I wouldn't get my hopes up...

PS: The thing is loud...