SoftRAID will now charge?

[Johnny Jackhammer]

We've been using an OWC 4 Bay Thunderbolt array forever, it would seem. It's set up as a RAID5 system.
…

very good rhetorical questions!

I just moved from RAID 5 on a single enclosure to a RAID 10 split between two enclosures. it’s a bit safer and it’s much faster (~3x), however the TB enclosure has to be three feet away from my iMac to get the speed benefit. I don’t like the noise. I am thinking of investing in a 10g network to keep all of these spinning disks somewhere far far away, and keep the speed . We use the RAID for our Music and Photos libraries and archiving other stuff. We also keep our Plex disks in one of those enclosures.

Many people are talking about NAS over a 1g network but man that is slow. No point in any RAID setup or single disk faster than 120 MB/s for a NAS on 1g. What happens when you need to move all that data!

I chose HFS+ for my spinning drives except when I need an encrypted volume because HFS+ encrypted is no longer an option.

Time Machine purportedly runs very slow over wifi and Ethernet ortherwise I would use an HDD slot for each family member in the enclosure. I guess there are some things we can do to help… NTFS?

I like your idea of SSD for Time Machine in a dock.

 

[phrehdd]

very good rhetorical questions!

I just moved from RAID 5 on a single enclosure to a RAID 10 split between two enclosures. it’s a bit safer and it’s much faster (~3x), however the TB enclosure has to be three feet away from my iMac to get the speed benefit. I don’t like the noise. I am thinking of investing in a 10g network to keep all of these spinning disks somewhere far far away, and keep the speed . We use the RAID for our Music and Photos libraries and archiving other stuff. We also keep our Plex disks in one of those enclosures.

Many people are talking about NAS over a 1g network but man that is slow. No point in any RAID setup or single disk faster than 120 MB/s for a NAS on 1g. What happens when you need to move all that data!

I chose HFS+ for my spinning drives except when I need an encrypted volume because HFS+ encrypted is no longer an option.

Time Machine purportedly runs very slow over wifi and Ethernet ortherwise I would use an HDD slot for each family member in the enclosure. I guess there are some things we can do to help… NTFS?

I like your idea of SSD for Time Machine in a dock.

While not perfect by any means - Asustor Flashstor uses SSD only (NVM2) and has two versions a 6 slot with 2 x 2.5gig ports and a 12 slot with 1 10g port. They can handle up to 4TB NVM2 per allowing the 4x6 or 4x12 respectively. Might want to check it out. I say not perfect because the cpu and the lanes are bottlenecks to some extent but it is runs quiet and take less power.

As for traditional NAS, some will either come with 10g Ethernet ports or allow a card that does 10g to be added. I think however, fiber may be the fastest throughput assuming no bottlenecks

 

[Ethosik]

I'd say you did, given that I've gone through three OWC RAID enclosures due to component failures (and the first one was DOA.)

If my current one gives up the ghost I'm migrating to something else. The main benefit of using them was a DAS would get covered by my Backblaze recovery, but it's not really been worth the headaches (and the costs of using that Backblaze sub to ship a hard drive to recover from my RAID failing.)

I think with 10/25/40 Gbps networking it makes direct attach storage less ideal. I can shove my noisy NAS in the basement in my home office with my networking closet and still get fast speeds.

 

[Johnny Jackhammer]

One month later...

I have removed SoftRAID and am using the native Disk Utility command line tools' `appleRAID`. So far no issues. Just as fast. The only question is if there is every an issue there doesn't seem to be much literature on how to recover from a damaged Apple RAID 1+0 setup. To test, before putting any data on the RAID 1+0, I turned off one of the enclosures that contained one of the mirror sets. Then turned it back on again. The only annoying drawback was there was no notification at all that the RAID was compromised. It kept running as if all was normal except the stripe was no longer functioning and it was far slower. A quick reboot and everything was as before. If there were a utility or script out there to signal this - that would be helpful.

I am using DriveDX for the SMART notifications.

AppleRAID sets (3 found) =============================================================================== Name: godzillaPart1 Unique ID: B5906344-1503-425F-8C89-C7AEF5E6D02F Type: Mirror Status: Online Size: 4.0 TB (4000443039744 Bytes) Rebuild: manual Device Node: - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # DevNode UUID Status Size ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 0 disk5s2 44E83653-21DC-4BC1-89CC-629BD0575A93 Online 4000443039744 1 disk8s2 253B581D-880D-467E-956B-737FBD7875F3 Online 4000443039744 =============================================================================== =============================================================================== Name: godzillaPart1 Unique ID: 448A6929-4CDE-442D-A269-D3C39BBC2328 Type: Mirror Status: Online Size: 4.0 TB (4000443039744 Bytes) Rebuild: manual Device Node: - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # DevNode UUID Status Size ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 0 disk7s2 C5D8B07B-1B95-4A61-BFC8-A06EB7C119BC Online 4000443039744 1 disk6s2 E6CCC28D-6C9C-4481-B424-E975B776E1D1 Online 4000443039744 =============================================================================== =============================================================================== Name: Godzilla Unique ID: 14BE34FC-EA98-4384-A71A-A9B2E8B6DC6B Type: Stripe Status: Online Size: 8.0 TB (8000886013952 Bytes) Rebuild: manual Device Node: disk9 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # DevNode UUID Status Size ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 0 -none- B5906344-1503-425F-8C89-C7AEF5E6D02F Online 4000443006976 1 -none- 448A6929-4CDE-442D-A269-D3C39BBC2328 Online 4000443006976 ===============================================================================

 

[TwoBytes]

Many of us bought into OWC because we wanted ease of use with a dashboard, software, and notifications. Now they are charging for software updates; it's the slow end of the company. I'm sure their sales will reflect this if not disgruntled customers.

 

[MacRumoren]

Many of us bought into OWC because we wanted ease of use with a dashboard, software, and notifications. Now they are charging for software updates; it's the slow end of the company. I'm sure their sales will reflect this if not disgruntled customers.

Agreed, over the years, I have bought so many enclosures from OWC, but I will never buy another OWC product ever again, as long as they keep up with this model.

This is like my data being held hostage, and to access it each year, I will have to pay ransom.

Has anyone figured out a way to access data without needing to run SoftRAID?

 

[TwoBytes]

Agreed, over the years, I have bought so many enclosures from OWC, but I will never buy another OWC product ever again, as long as they keep up with this model.

This is like my data being held hostage, and to access it each year, I will have to pay ransom.

Has anyone figured out a way to access data without needing to run SoftRAID?

you can still access it but you don't get the softraid features to manage your array

 

[BKDad]

I don't think this will be the end of the company. OWC appears to be much, much more than SoftRAID. Not trivializing the SoftRAID revenue contribution, but it's just one item on their menu.

Lots of companies are now selling their software on a subscription basis. That's been the case for more than a decade in the commercial realm, like for system simulation software used in engineering. The market for the software is only so large and it gets saturated fairly quickly. Attracting new customers becomes harder and harder. So, for survival, they go to a subscription model. I see that a lot of macOS software is doing that now. I think that just shows the limits of the market size.

Heck, look at Apple itself. They come out with new iGadgets every year that are marginally better than the previous generation. They then apply lots of marketing savvy to get people to buy the latest and greatest. It's like fashion wear. Last year's sweater/dress/jeans/etc. still cover the parts of your body that you want covered for various reasons as well as they did last year. And they keep you just as warm. But, people have to have the latest. It works for Apple.

That's the way software is headed now. It stinks in a way for us, but it would also stink for us if the software vendors we relied upon went bankrupt.

An update on the file access thing with external drives:

I mentioned before that listing the files in large folders located on an external drive takes far longer on this Studio running Ventura than it did on an eight year old iMac running Mojave. My speculation was that it had something to do with the drives in the SoftRAID system being formatted as HFS+. That might be part of it, but I have since discovered that restarting the computer almost always fixes the problem. Still, after a while the delay becomes noticeable and gets longer and longer. It appears to be something related to Finder or some lower level API that it calls. This problem persists into Sonoma. Lots of people have reported this to Apple and nothing has been done, at least to date.

Personally, I am rethinking my own approach and will probably shut the computer down each night. That masks the problem, but, so what? It might make sense for other reasons, too. I got into the habit of letting the computer run because of some of the maintenance that gets done in the middle of the night and because spinning hard drives apparently suffer some level of shock when started up. But, with SSDs in the Macs now, that last one is somewhat moot.

So, although Apple may not charge actual dollars for software upgrades, you pay in other ways. Functions that worked great before don't always work now. Even paying actual dollars for a hardware upgrade doesn't solve the problem, either.

But, I don't think this will be the end of Apple, either. If everybody who ever read MacRumors suddenly decided to switch to Linux machines for the desktop and laptop and also moved to Android phones and tablets, I don't think Apple would ever notice or even care.

 

[tvv]

Agreed, over the years, I have bought so many enclosures from OWC, but I will never buy another OWC product ever again, as long as they keep up with this model.

This is like my data being held hostage, and to access it each year, I will have to pay ransom.

Has anyone figured out a way to access data without needing to run SoftRAID?

Your volume will still mount (as of like MacOS 13.3) so your data isn't hostage. You don't need to install any softraid app for this. You just can't modify the RAID without installing the utility.

 

[phrehdd]

Those considering jumping ship might indeed find higher performance NAS as a possibility. Some come with 2.5 gig ports and other 10 gig and fiber 10 Gig. Some also offer a DAS connection via Thunderbolt which leaves the NAS unit with its own OS.

 

[Johnny Jackhammer]

Three months later… no issues running an Apple RAID using DiskUtility.

 

[phrehdd]

Three months later… no issues running an Apple RAID using DiskUtility.

I used Apple’s offering years ago. Worked very well. Which RAID are you using?

 

[Johnny Jackhammer]

I used Apple’s offering years ago. Worked very well. Which RAID are you using?

OWC TB4. The only drawback is the loss of monitoring. At the same time if it “just works” then the monitoring is really unnecessary.

 

[phrehdd]

OWC TB4. The only drawback is the loss of monitoring. At the same time if it “just works” then the monitoring is really unnecessary.

Agreed that monitoring when things are working correctly isn’t necessary but having warnings is really a must and if attempting to restore (as in replace a drive from RAID 10 or 5 as example), it is of great value to know if the restore is succeeding or what issues are found.

 

[Johnny Jackhammer]

Agreed that monitoring when things are working correctly isn’t necessary but having warnings is really a must and if attempting to restore (as in replace a drive from RAID 10 or 5 as example), it is of great value to know if the restore is succeeding or what issues are found.

There is certainly a convenience factor in having a graphical HUD for RAID - I just don't want to pay $10 a month for it. Disk Utility has tools to do all of the things you mention and certainly reports if errors are found.

 

[phrehdd]

There is certainly a convenience factor in having a graphical HUD for RAID - I just don't want to pay $10 a month for it. Disk Utility has tools to do all of the things you mention and certainly reports if errors are found.

I hate the subscription model for just about any software. This SoftRaid idea to force subscription is truly ridiculous.

 

[TwoBytes]

There must be some freeware raid 5 software for mac?

 

[jdb8167]

I'm still on Monterey on my 2013 Mac Pro with SoftRAID 7.5. No point in updating since the Mac Pro OS is now maxed out on Monterey. But this weekend I did finally update my OWC Mini 4 to use APFS instead of the original HFS+. Oddly I got a warning from SoftRAID that said that APFS will slow down over time because of APFS copy on write. I want to use part of the RAID as a time machine backup and the rest as archival. It seems pretty easy to make sure any copying is done between volumes to stop any copy on write functionality if things get slow.

Does anyone have experience that shows that SoftRAID and APFS will become unacceptably slow over time? Or is this concern only if you ware using SoftRAID for workstation functionality?

 

[BKDad]

You have SSDs in your Mini 4? If so, I think they gave you misleading information.

When HFS+ is better

 

[jdb8167]

You have SSDs in your Mini 4? If so, I think they gave you misleading information.

When HFS+ is better

No I have HDDs. Time Machine and archival only. I do all my work on internal SSDs on my MacBook. I’m trying to understand the nuance of using SoftRAID with APFS. The main reason is that I want to use it for Time Machine as well.

Edit: Also thanks for the eclecticlight link. Howard Oakley does excellent research. It almost answers my question except for this disclaimer:

• This doesn’t apply to RAID arrays or shared storage, such as that containing sparsebundles, which need separate assessment.

 

[BKDad]

No I have HDDs. Time Machine and archival only. I do all my work on internal SSDs on my MacBook. I’m trying to understand the nuance of using SoftRAID with APFS. The main reason is that I want to use it for Time Machine as well.

Edit: Also thanks for the eclecticlight link. Howard Oakley does excellent research. It almost answers my question except for this disclaimer:

He does say that...

FWIW, what I did was to keep my "regular" RAID storage drives as HFS+. They're all HDDs and I was convinced that I had nothing to gain by going to APFS for them and potentially something to lose, mostly with regard to drive life, since APFS is constantly moving things around. That isn't an issue with SSD's, but it might be for HDDs.

Bombich on rotational drives

But, newer operating systems like Ventura and Sonoma really don't like using Time Machine with HFS+ formatted drives. I finally gave up after trying that for a few days. I'd previously dedicated a single volume in the RAID system for Time Machine. I could tell that wasn't going to work well over time.

My choices were to ditch Time Machine and just do automated backups with Carbon Copy Cloner every hour or two or keep using Time Machine with an APFS formatted SSD. After a couple weeks with the CCC approach, I decided that I didn't like how the drive was filling up. So, what I did was to buy a couple of SATA SSD's from MacSales and use them with an external dock similar to this one. Now, I rotate the two SSDs every week or so. Only one is in the dock at a time. If I forget, Time Machine reminds me that a drive hasn't been connected for 10 days. This is a more robust solution and I felt like a boob that I didn't think of it before. Especially since I already owned the drive dock and have used it routinely to back up the RAID volumes onto nude HDD's. Now, it just gets used more.

 

[tvv]

He does say that...

FWIW, what I did was to keep my "regular" RAID storage drives as HFS+. They're all HDDs and I was convinced that I had nothing to gain by going to APFS for them and potentially something to lose, mostly with regard to drive life, since APFS is constantly moving things around. That isn't an issue with SSD's, but it might be for HDDs.

Bombich on rotational drives

But, newer operating systems like Ventura and Sonoma really don't like using Time Machine with HFS+ formatted drives. I finally gave up after trying that for a few days. I'd previously dedicated a single volume in the RAID system for Time Machine. I could tell that wasn't going to work well over time.

My choices were to ditch Time Machine and just do automated backups with Carbon Copy Cloner every hour or two or keep using Time Machine with an APFS formatted SSD. After a couple weeks with the CCC approach, I decided that I didn't like how the drive was filling up. So, what I did was to buy a couple of SATA SSD's from MacSales and use them with an external dock similar to this one. Now, I rotate the two SSDs every week or so. Only one is in the dock at a time. If I forget, Time Machine reminds me that a drive hasn't been connected for 10 days. This is a more robust solution and I felt like a boob that I didn't think of it before. Especially since I already owned the drive dock and have used it routinely to back up the RAID volumes onto nude HDD's. Now, it just gets used more.

FYI you can actually put two different RAID file systems on one SoftRAID set of disks.

For example, say you have 4x 4TB HDDS. You can create an HFS+ RAID5 with 3TB from each drive, and an APFS RAID5 from the other 1TB of each drive. You can also put multiple types of RAIDs on the same disks as long as there is enough empty space. EG, you could put a RAID5 volume and a RAID0 volume on the same set of disks.

HFS+ is better for HDDs as with APFS, HDDs will slow down a ton. Read this: https://eshop.macsales.com/blog/43043-using-apfs-on-hdds-and-why-you-might-not-want-to/

But Time Machine requires APFS... so creating a second volume for this is a good solution.

 

[phrehdd]

Decouple TM. You can get an SSD or external enclosure and SSD/nvme at a fairly low price. Hang it directly to your Mac. I use TM with a 2 terabyte SSD that simply is connected and only check it from time to time. If you need more room, you can alway get either a 4 terabyte SSD or traditional mech drives.

 

[BKDad]

Thanks - valuable information.

Since my RAID system is really for archives and files I only need to get to occasionally, HDD's work fine.

The Time Machine SSD's are only 2 Tb, because the system SSD in the Studio is 1 Tb. They weren't expensive, they don't make any noise, and the backups take less than 30 seconds. Good enough for me.

Now, if our hobby or business was editing video, that'd be a different story.

 

[BKDad]

Decouple TM. You can get an SSD or external enclosure and SSD/nvme at a fairly low price. Hang it directly to your Mac. I use TM with a 2 terabyte SSD that simply is connected and only check it from time to time. If you need more room, you can alway get either a 4 terabyte SSD or traditional mech drives.

That's exactly what I did! My "enclosure" just happens to be open so that I can also use it for making backups of the RAID volumes and it's also easier to rotate the TM drives.