MP 7,1 Mac Pro 2019 7,1 and Big Sur - Feedback

[chfilm]

Correction. No, it's not fixed. But it seems to wait quite a bit longer before the fans kick in.

damn, that wouldve been too good to be true!

 

[Ben1l]

No issues with my 4TB Accelsior whatsoever. No issues with anything actually. Install was uneventful.

but I understand SoftRAID won't work in Big Sur?

 

[Ben1l]

No issues with my 4TB Accelsior whatsoever. No issues with anything actually. Install was uneventful.

but I understand Softraid won't work in Big Sur? Are there alternatives to Softraid that will work??

 

[bsbeamer]

but I understand SoftRAID won't work in Big Sur?

SoftRAID - Compatibility Notes

Check the latest updates and compatibility with SoftRAID and major OS releases.

www.softraid.com

You would need SoftRaid6, which has been delayed for at least 2 years (maybe 3+). Stopped using or recommending their products completely.

 

[Ben1l]

SoftRAID - Compatibility Notes

Check the latest updates and compatibility with SoftRAID and major OS releases.

www.softraid.com

You would need SoftRaid6, which has been delayed for at least 2 years (maybe 3+). Stopped using or recommending their products completely.

Is there an alternative to softraid that will work with the Accelsior that you can Recommend? Thanks!

 

[LeonPro]

Why don't you use Apple's own RAID? What kind of RAID are you using anyway?

 

[Ben1l]

Why don't you use Apple's own RAID? What kind of RAID are you using anyway?

I’m using softraid on an Accelsior. I work as a video editor and understand that raid 4 is the best for my needs as it provides the best mix of speed and redundancy. But I’m by no means and export and would welcome any input.

 

[iGobbleoff]

No problems here. 1TB ssd with OWC drive and WX9100. Works a treat

 

[LeonPro]

I’m using softraid on an Accelsior. I work as a video editor and understand that raid 4 is the best for my needs as it provides the best mix of speed and redundancy. But I’m by no means and export and would welcome any input.

I'm a video editor, but our workflow and needs might be different. If I were to use another RAID than what I'm using now, I would use 10, then RAID 5 (over RAID 4). They are technically the same except the way they stripe the drives. RAID 5 will give you more speed advantage which is what you might be looking for in your work.

As for myself, I'm similarly using a PCIe card - Sonnet m.2 4x4. I've paired that with 4 x 2TB sticks. What I did is do a RAID 0 x 2 (i.e. 2 x 2TB in RAID 0 + 2 x 2TB in RAID 0). That gives me 4TB to work on my video files. The other 4TB is my mirror drive which is automatically copied every night on a schedule via Carbon Copy Cloner.

This is acting like RAID 10 (or 1+0), but without instantaneous redundancy. There is obviously a risk to have these drives not copied at once, but also advantages which in my case I'd rather deal with which I'll explain below.

As a video editor, I'm constantly accessing (large) files - reading and writing - as I create versions and more revisions. And you have to remember SSDs have a finite write amount. When that happens, they are done. I'm delaying the decay of my mirror RAID by only writing a few times, versus constantly on my main RAID.

In your case, you have the safety of 1 drive failing but you're also constantly writing on all SSDs so the chances of these failing at the same time due to write amount having reached will be greater.

Granted this may not be reached by a regular person over the life of their computer. But in video editing with project after project in files at least 4K and above - we're pushing these to their limits faster than regular.

Again, I don't know how large of a file you're dealing, how much you edit daily, how much space you need, and how fast you need to access. So take this as another person's perspective.

 

[bsbeamer]

Is there an alternative to softraid that will work with the Accelsior that you can Recommend? Thanks!

Depends on what you're using SoftRaid for currently. If you're managing the Accelesior AND building RAID through SoftRaid, there are not a lot of alternatives since it's OWC's "ecosystem" of products. Hammer on their support team and tell them you're looking for path forward. Short term, cloning data off SSD RAID, destroying the SoftRaid config, then setting up through macOS natively is your best bet.

If you're using Accelsior for bootable options, the situation is even worse. macOS does not support RAID bootable in latest builds. There are no workarounds.

Personally would recommend against the Accelsior and most OWC products that rely on SoftRaid for either configuration or management in any capacity. The software has been delayed numerous times and Version 6 is just not going to happen in a timely manner, or trusted timetable. They were still accepting Beta invites months ago, but that may have stopped entirely. Reports in another forum of major issues and data loss with several RAID configurations in Beta.

 

[LeonPro]

I would just use Apple's own RAID to ensure compatibility regardless of OS revisions. It doesn't do RAID 4 or 5, but as you can see SoftRAID is not entirely up to date and may risk more data loss.

 

[Jupeman]

I have apps crashing fairly routinely (Final Cut Pro, Affinity Publisher) due to graphic kernel panics. This all started with Big Sur. Radeon 580X...

 

[profdraper]

SoftRAID - Compatibility Notes

Check the latest updates and compatibility with SoftRAID and major OS releases.

www.softraid.com

You would need SoftRaid6, which has been delayed for at least 2 years (maybe 3+). Stopped using or recommending their products completely.

I find this difficult to believe & have worked with OWC on beta testing etc. In any case: 1) write to OWC for a SoftRAID 6 beta and/or download from http://www.softraid.com/sr_beta. As far as I can tell, this is functioning perfectly well on Big Sur 11.01 and looks exactly the same as v5.xx on Catalina; drivers install install as they should. 2) I also use SoftRAID lite on Windows and this reads & writes (HFS+) RAID 0 & 1 cross-platform. Soon a 'full' SoftRAID (RAID 4, 5 etc) will be released for Windows and I suspect this will coincide with the SoftRAID 6 release for both windows & macos.

 

[Ben1l]

I'm a video editor, but our workflow and needs might be different. If I were to use another RAID than what I'm using now, I would use 10, then RAID 5 (over RAID 4). They are technically the same except the way they stripe the drives. RAID 5 will give you more speed advantage which is what you might be looking for in your work.

As for myself, I'm similarly using a PCIe card - Sonnet m.2 4x4. I've paired that with 4 x 2TB sticks. What I did is do a RAID 0 x 2 (i.e. 2 x 2TB in RAID 0 + 2 x 2TB in RAID 0). That gives me 4TB to work on my video files. The other 4TB is my mirror drive which is automatically copied every night on a schedule via Carbon Copy Cloner.

This is acting like RAID 10 (or 1+0), but without instantaneous redundancy. There is obviously a risk to have these drives not copied at once, but also advantages which in my case I'd rather deal with which I'll explain below.

As a video editor, I'm constantly accessing (large) files - reading and writing - as I create versions and more revisions. And you have to remember SSDs have a finite write amount. When that happens, they are done. I'm delaying the decay of my mirror RAID by only writing a few times, versus constantly on my main RAID.

In your case, you have the safety of 1 drive failing but you're also constantly writing on all SSDs so the chances of these failing at the same time due to write amount having reached will be greater.

Granted this may not be reached by a regular person over the life of their computer. But in video editing with project after project in files at least 4K and above - we're pushing these to their limits faster than regular.

Again, I don't know how large of a file you're dealing, how much you edit daily, how much space you need, and how fast you need to access. So take this as another person's perspective.

Really good advice, thank you for taking the time.
I've gone with a Raid 0 setup for speed and will set CCC to backup at the end of every day.

 

[tevion5]

Using Big Sur since public release with a W5700X and 1TB SSD.

Subjectively my overall experience "feels" a bit more more responsive, but I don't notice any change to performance in Logic Pro anyway. So nothing negative so far.

 

[LeonPro]

For those that have moved on to Big Sur, have you now deleted your Catalina OS from the drive or are you keeping it still?

I created a partition on my main drive to install Big Sur. I have no further issues with it and wondering if I should now delete the partition of Catalina.

 

[bsbeamer]

Wait until .2 or .3 at least

 

[LeonPro]

That's what I'm thinking. I was waiting for the next update to know that I can finally let go.

 

[timerickson]

I’m using softraid on an Accelsior. I work as a video editor and understand that raid 4 is the best for my needs as it provides the best mix of speed and redundancy. But I’m by no means and export and would welcome any input.

I'm sorry I can't let this slip… why are you using RAID 4? It's somewhat exotic, offers you no benefit over RAID 5 (RAID 5 spreads the parity over each disk). RAID 4 requires a dedicated parity disk, so your whole array is limited by the speed of the parity disk. RAID 4 should only be used if your dedicated parity disk is much faster than your striping drives. Because the Accelsior offers 4 identical drives in the array, it isn't useful here.

Is your Accelsior array storing your media long term, or is it your scratch disk while editing? I personally wouldn't be worrying about disk fault tolerance for a local scratch disk. You should have a separate backup approach anyways. RAID is NOT a backup. RAID 0 will stripe across all drives and give you the performance of 4x.

You can also make RAID 10 with macOS Disk Utility, if you're worried about disk fault tolerance, but you give up 50%, not the 25% of RAID4/5

 

[timerickson]

As a fellow video editor, what I use and recommend:

Large storage via NAS with RAID6 (or RAID10)
Local scratch drive with RAID0
Nightly backup task (with Carbon Copy Cloner) to backup the scratch drive to the NAS, overwriting each previous backup.

If one SSD fails in the local scratch drive, build a new RAID0 with a fresh replacement SSD, restore from backup

 

[timerickson]

Derp, I now see thats exactly what you've setup

 

[daveedjackson]

Also have the Vega, keen to know if there are any speed improvements. I have to be honest I've gone from the W5700x to the Vega, and not overly notices any performance in GPU. Not sure it's worthy of so much song and dance....

 

[LeonPro]

Improvements from what task? This will only matter if you’re pushing the limits like rendering. In which case you can monitor your GPU workload and see the difference in core utilization. One might show 90% utilization while the other will show 20%.

 

[OkiRun]

Improvements from what task? This will only matter if you’re pushing the limits like rendering. In which case you can monitor your GPU workload and see the difference in core utilization. One might show 90% utilization while the other will show 20%.

Wow ~
You always have a great post to start the thinking. Does he have IF connection? The DUO Card outputs as one in the output. No IF, then outputs as two in the output. ??

 

[haralds]

cMP 5,1 with upgraded RX-580 and BLE/WiFi. Has been working great since beta, but started having stuttering issue with video and audio devices on FASTA USb3. Weird, worked great until a couple of days ago. No changes.
Catalina works great.