Apple RAID any different in macOS Sierra?

[milleron]

As we all know, Apple RAID was absent in El Capitan. It has been reintroduced in macOS Sierra. However, because of a bug (in 10.12) in driving Dell external displays, I've not upgraded yet.

1 -- Does anyone know if it has been coded differently than the Apple RAID we last saw in Yosemite? For example, SoftRAID claims that their drivers will produce data transfer rates that are "86% faster than Apple RAID," so I'm wondering if that comparison is still valid.

2 -- Will a couple of RAID1 sets I created under Mavericks still retain functionality under macOS Sierra — i.e., if I lose a disk and need to rebuild the array will macOS Sierra be able to do it?

3 -- Are there any rumors about just why Apple removed Apple RAID from El Capitan only, strangely, to reintroduce it in macOS Sierra?

 

[chrfr]

As we all know, Apple RAID was absent in El Capitan.

AppleRAID was not removed from El Capitan, it just wasn't in Disk Utility. It's always been possible to create RAID volumes in El Capitan via command line.

 

[milleron]

AppleRAID was not removed from El Capitan, it just wasn't in Disk Utility. It's always been possible to create RAID volumes in El Capitan via command line.

Actually, I wasn't aware that it could be done from the command line in El Capitan, so thanks for that info, but it doesn't answer my question.

 

[chrfr]

Actually, I wasn't aware that it could be done from the command line in El Capitan, so thanks for that info, but it doesn't answer my question.

It does answer #3 of your questions, but otherwise, there are no obvious changes. AppleRAID volumes will work the same in Sierra as they did in earlier versions of OS X.
I switched to SoftRAID (edit: about a year ago) because I don't trust that Apple is very interested in RAID support, and had a number of instances where AppleRAID drives silently became unsynchronized. I've had no such failures since switching to SoftRAID. In my mind, it's worth the cost.

 

[milleron]

It does answer #3 of your questions, but otherwise, there are no obvious changes. AppleRAID volumes will work the same in Sierra as they did in earlier versions of OS X.
I switched to SoftRAID (edit: about a year ago) because I don't trust that Apple is very interested in RAID support, and had a number of instances where AppleRAID drives silently became unsynchronized. I've had no such failures since switching to SoftRAID. In my mind, it's worth the cost.

I agree. I purchased SoftRAID only to discover that it cannot convert AppleRAID arrays when there is more than one partition on each disk. I have two disks with two identical partitions on each. Partition 1 on Disk 1 is in RAID1 with partition 1 on Disk 2. The remaining two partitions are also in a separate RAID1 array. The only way to move to SoftRAID is to back up everything to OTHER disks, then reformat the original disks, create the RAID1 arrays in SoftRAID, and restore the data. The cost of buying drives to copy the data to is not trivial. That's why I was hoping that AppleRAID might have been vastly improved during its mysterious absence from Disk Utility.
Guess not. Guess I'll have to bite the bullet and perform the substantial hassle of doing all that.