I use a 2013 Mac Pro like a NAS. I currently use an old Time Capsule for backup for the MP but it is on its last legs and I don’t want to rely on it any longer. But I have a 4 TB OWC Mini 4 (3 TB RAID) already connected that will be fine as a 1.5 TB Time Machine volume. The rest of the disk is used for archival storage which is backed up by Backblaze and nothing else.
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SoftRAID will now charge?
- Thread starter Johnny Jackhammer
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I do a weekly TM backups to 2 separate Thunderbay APFS JBODs with no problems.
I have had one for some time. I had two, one died and the build on these is crappy and unreliable; plastic parts to hold drives, etc. Running one now that I see I formatted with SoftRAID because the hardware settings were funky and there was no comparable reliability utilities.
I do have a reliable QNAP server with 8 drives, a NASDF1B42. It is mostly metal and very solid. You don't need SR for it or anything else as it does its own format and there are no issues. The less costly XT only works on OWS drives. This QNAP is fine but a few years old and not very fast. Later iterations are no doubt better, but costly.
I have set up a 10gb network (or sub-network) that runs fine with both Macs and PCs. But elsewhere I find it almost impossible to get a complete backup for 1TB+ or very large files with servers generally of any kind, besides the slow speed, so I have only been successful with Carbon Copy Cloner, which is great.
Love that feature on my QNAP and Synology. Easy to replace/add drives. Snap off/snap on. The all-metal and screw holders on my Promise systems are a pain in the neck. 6 small screws which have to be exactly matched to the holes in the drive.
phrehdd
Contributor
I admit I hate this crap of changing to a subscription without grandfathering in those who bought in the past and remained happy with the product. Being the hothead I am at these things, I might have just scrapped the entirety of the product and make sure an honest "review" went to the right locations for others as a caveat.
However, other options - possibly run a virtual OS that has software RAID that can "share" the device. A VM of linux might do the trick though the format of the disks would be different but addressable. Another option would be to hook it up to another computer such as a small PC device and let it now run akin to a NAS. Last of course is as I said, abandon it in favour of a dedicated NAS.
I posted how to do this at the very beginning. Use AppleRaid - it’s free and been running for 9 months without issue.
phrehdd
Contributor
Is Apple Raid capable of RAID 5 or just 10 and 01 and 1 and 0? I recall using Apple's RAID with one of the earliest Mac Pro models. Had good luck back then with it.
Just use terminal appleRaid commands. Yes you can 5 and 10. Run a web search for guides.
I have not been able to find this and, according Apples own support documents ( https://support.apple.com/guide/disk-utility/create-a-disk-set-dskua23150fd/mac) it only supports RAID 0, 1 and JBOD. Are you referring to one of Apple's RAID cards for the MACPro. If not, maybe you can point us to the Terminal commands that allow the Apple Raid utility to support RAID 5 (specifically) because it would be a great way to avoid SoftRAID.
chrfr
macrumors G5
The only Apple RAID card is the one that shipped back in the 2007 and 2009-ish time frame and is very slow and no longer worth using, compared to modern NVMe SSDs.
macOS Disk Utility Can Create Four Popular RAID Arrays
macOS marks the return of RAID support to Disk Utility. You can use the RAID Assistant to create RAID 0, RAID 1, JBOD, and RAID 10 or RAID 01.
try this and go from there. This is the guide that I used and it's been up and running 24hr a day for 9 months without an issue.
Before doing it I also researched how to handle a situation where the Apple RAID has issues.
I used a combination of Terminal commands and Disk Utility.
Before putting anything on the RAID 10 I did some disconnect testing - as if the power went out. To see how to fix and recover. Read up on how to rebuild if this happens.
Thank you, I much appreciate the feedback although I was looking for a RAID 5 set up alternatives to SoftRAID. I was not aware the Apple built RAID facility supported RAID 10 (not mentioned in their documentation).macOS Disk Utility Can Create Four Popular RAID Arrays
macOS marks the return of RAID support to Disk Utility. You can use the RAID Assistant to create RAID 0, RAID 1, JBOD, and RAID 10 or RAID 01.www.lifewire.com
try this and go from there. This is the guide that I used and it's been up and running 24hr a day for 9 months without an issue.
Before doing it I also researched how to handle a situation where the Apple RAID has issues.
I used a combination of Terminal commands and Disk Utility.
Before putting anything on the RAID 10 I did some disconnect testing - as if the power went out. To see how to fix and recover. Read up on how to rebuild if this happens.
I switched to RAID 10 because it's safer. RAID 5 is a bit dangerous in that you have one spare only. If rebuilding a large array another drive from the group dies (can happen, does happen especially if they are all the same age) you are screwed. You can do RAID 5 and keep a single disk backup if your array is not larger than 22 TB but then why not just do RAID 10 -- you are using the same amount of disk storage at that point.
phrehdd
Contributor
Thanks for the info on terminal access. Quick q - if there is a failure of a disk for either...does terminal have reasonable commands to do a restore with a new disk?
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As you say, RAID 10 is both faster and safer (as it uses two pairs of striped drives in a mirror array) than RAID 5 but uses more redundant disk space. The minimum number of disks for RAID 10 is 4, whereas RAID 5 has a minimum number of 3. So I use RAID 5 as it is more economical on drives and it provides back up only. If I was using the array as a working disk, I would switch to RAID 10. I have 4 disks of 6TB each giving me a working storage of 18 TB in RAID 5 rather than 12 TB in RAID 10. As always it depends on your usage and cost benefits.
6tb hdd is $130. So cost benefits is not really a factor. Plus sticking with RAID5 is costing you more since you need to pay OWC $200 a year every year forever. RAID10 is faster and has more redundancy.
Cost was a factor when I set it up (they were around $260 per drive and I use high reliability drives which are more expensive). Also I have had only one drive wear out in 6 years which was replaced by Toshiba free of charge. But now that OWC are charging I will probably look at RAID 10 and increase the drive sizes to cope with the loss of capacity in my 4 drive enclosure. But that will wait until I get another drive failure. Bottom line is I made the correct decision at the time but now that OWC charge me to support RAID 5 and the lowered cost of drives makes RAID 10 a more acceptable solution. At the time access speed was not an issue, cost was.
OWC_TAL
macrumors regular
Heya! There are some big changes coming to SoftRAID licensing later this month that I think you will like/appreciate. I'd recommend to just wait a few more weeks for the announcement(s) 🙂
I agree, and this was the same conversation I had with myself. It just so happened that they started charging while I was considering moving up in capacity. Paying subscription fees is not my thing and I was also thinking of moving up on capacity.
I did make an error in that appleRAID doesn't do RAID 5... AFAIK. Maybe someone can prove me wrong.