SoftRAID is disk driver software that allows you to create, monitor, and maintain a software implementation of RAID for greater speed and data protection.
Standard Hardware RAID products only protect you from losing files when disks fail. SoftRAID does more by constantly checking your disks and warning you in advance—before a disk fails—giving you time to replace bad disks, saving precious files and data.
Not only do you gain peace of mind knowing that you’ll be alerted about disk problems, SoftRAID will allow you to carry on with work (with all RAID levels over 0) even if a drive fails.
SoftRAID offers 5 RAID levels: RAID 0, 1, 4, 5 and 1+0. All RAID levels above RAID 0 offer data protection and redundancy. RAID 0 does not protect your data, but if you work with large temporary files (such as video scratch data) you’ll love the lightening fast disk access.
Primary Features of SoftRAID 5.6.3
- SoftRAID is now compatible with macOS High Sierra, although SoftRAID 5.6.3 does not support creating, modifying or converting APFS volumes. However SoftRAID’s certify, verify and monitoring features do work with APFS formatted disks.
- High Sierra includes increased kernel security features which changed the behavior of some macOS kernel functions. This change in kernel behavior could cause disks to hang. SoftRAID 5.6.3 includes driver modifications to ensure that disks do not hang with macOS 10.13 High Sierra.
- The SoftRAID driver has been changed to handle disk errors better. A read error during a cache flush operation could cause a kernel panic with RAID 4 and 5 volumes.
- The SoftRAID driver has been changed to use fewer threads, since macOS 10.13, High Sierra, now limits the number of kernel threads which can run at one time. Previous releases of SoftRAID could cause this limit to be exceeded during disk update operations, causing a kernel panic. The new driver uses no more than 1 thread per disk for disk update operations.
Fixes to driver loading ensure that the correct driver is installed when installing for the first time, and that newly updated drivers are always loaded. In previous versions it was possible for older, cached versions of the driver to be loaded by mistake under certain circumstances. - The SoftRAID driver no longer reports read errors on stripe (RAID 0) volumes as write errors.
- The command line interface of the SoftRAID Tool no longer returns an error every time the disk unmount command is used. In previous versions, this command, used to unmount all volumes which use a given disk, would return an error even if it was successful.
- SoftRAID 5.6.3 also includes numerous bug fixes, details of which can be found in the release notes.
- SoftRAID is actively supported and improved
At SoftRAID, we don’t believe that software should be shipped and then forgotten. We are constantly refining and improving our product, because we love what we do and want it to be the best it can possibly be!
SoftRAID: invaluable features at a great price
SoftRAID 5.6.3 features a highly optimized driver, which provides a software RAID solution that equals, and can often exceed, the performance and reliability of dedicated hardware RAID controllers. In addition, users can also take advantage of SoftRAID’s advanced disk testing, logging and disk health monitoring. SoftRAID’s unique disk failure prediction provides advanced warning of potential disk problems, protecting users from catastrophic data loss that can occur when a disk suddenly fails.
At just $179 the full version of SoftRAID supports 5 RAID levels (0, 1, 4, 5 & 1+0), plus email notification of potential disk failure and command line support.
For $49, users can purchase SoftRAID Lite and create RAID 0 and RAID 1 volumes, or convert their AppleRAID volumes to SoftRAID.
Both versions use exactly the same great driver, provide the same disk testing and health monitoring, and are localized for French, German, Spanish, Japanese and Chinese.
Great customer support
SoftRAID has some of the best tech support in the industry. We know our users don’t just work 9–5 on weekdays, so our tech support team is available to help them on nights and weekends, ready to get to the bottom of each and every customer problem. Don’t just take our word for it, visit our web site and see what customers say about SoftRAID: https://softraid.com/pages/reviews/customers_comments.html
System Requirements
SoftRAID 5 requires an Intel based running Mac OS X 10.6.8 or later. Support for TRIM commands on SSDs requires 10.7.5 or later.
Partial list of SoftRAID Features
- Supports all versions of Mac OS X from 10.6.8 through macOS High Sierra 10.13
- Support for all Intel based Macs with Core Duo 2 processors or later
- Support for Thunderbolt 1, 2 & 3, eSATA, SAS, FireWire and USB 2.0, 3.0, 3.1 and USB-C
- Support RAID 0, 1, 1+0, 4 and 5 (and non-RAID volumes) – (RAID 4, 5 and 1+0 volumes are not available in SoftRAID Lite)
- Convert AppleRAID stripe (RAID 0) and mirror (RAID 1) volumes to SoftRAID
- Support for TRIM (for SSDs) on all SoftRAID RAID levels
- All SoftRAID volumes can be startup volumes. However note that the macOS High Sierra Installer does not recognize
- SoftRAID volumes as valid startup volumes. If you want to create a macOS High Sierra 10.13 startup volume using a
- SoftRAID volume, please contact [email protected]
- Supports volumes up to 4 petabytes (4,000 TB)
- Supports up to 16 disks per volume and up to 32 volumes per Mac
- Automatic rebuilding of out-of-sync RAID volumes
- “Fast Rebuilds” for accelerated rebuild times
- Disk error reporting; SoftRAID monitors and logs all disk errors (often ignored by macOS)
- Email notification (not available with SoftRAID Lite
- Predictive failure analysis—giving advance warning of imminent disk failure—on all disks which support SMART, most
- USB 3, 3.1 and USB C disks (enclosures) and also many USB 2.0, FireWire 400 and 800 disks.
- “Certify Disk” guarantees disks reliably read and write data (destructive, ideal for new disks)
- “Verify Disk” ensures entire disk can be read (non-destructive test for any-time use)
- “Validate volume” confirms your entire volume is readable and all parity data is correct
- SMART testing on all disks which support SMART
- I/O and error counters for each SoftRAID disk and volume
- Extended disk information including: hours of use, reallocated sector counts and media wear for SSDs
- Disk labeling and LED blinking to aid in disk identification
- Complete logging of SoftRAID events
- Command Line interface
- Built in recovery tools for recovering severely damaged partition maps
- SoftRAID supports Mac OS from 10.6 to 10.13 High Sierra
SoftRAID version 5.6.3 is compatible with all versions of Mac OS X from 10.6.8 through the latest release of macOS 10.13 (High Sierra). We work hard to ensure that SoftRAID is ready for each new release of Mac OS X. We are currently testing SoftRAID with beta releases of Sierra, Apple’s soon-to-be-released Mac OS 10.12 to ensure that we have a version ready to go once Sierra is officially released.
30 Day Trial
SoftRAID version 5.6.3 is available as a 100% fully functional trial version, which allows prospective customers to try all the features of SoftRAID for 30 days for free.
Pricing
SoftRAID version 5.6.3 is available for just $179 for the electronic download version and includes one year of free technical support via email. It can be purchased via the SoftRAID website, through your Apple Certified Consultant and via retail outlets worldwide.
SoftRAID Lite is available for just $49 for the electronic download version and includes support via our online forum. SoftRAID Lite supports only non-RAID, stripe (RAID 0) and mirror (RAID 1) volumes. It can be purchased via the SoftRAID website, through your Apple Certified Consultant and via retail outlets worldwide.
Users of SoftRAID version 4 can purchase an upgrade to version 5.6.3 for $89.
About The Author
