![]() Well, by now it should be obvious that data reliability is the main rationale behind this setup. Can’t be too careful (or too paranoid) with data, you see. Oh, and a time machine backup of my office data also takes place, along with a SuperDuper clone of the root volume. Needless to say, each array is backed up to a Netgear ReadyNAS Pro, as well as a Solaris Express server. Most hard disks are WD 2Tb “green” models. ![]() For example, enclosure A stores my work-related stuff (in a 3-disk mirror), while enclosure B contains audiovisual stuff: a huge Adobe Lightroom catalog in a two-disk mirror, and my home video projects in another array. So, the setup is as follows: two 5-disk enclosures are directly attached to my Mac, each with an assortment of non-RAID and mirrored arrays, depending on the importance of the data. The OSX86 machine runs beautifuly, with many weeks’ work of uptime, albeit with some trouble which I’ve managed to troubleshoot (see below). Granted, there are some glitches (my MacBook Pro kernel occasionaly panics with the ExpressCard on boot up), but data reliability is not jeopardized as with other chipsets. port multiplication, hot swapping – as well as stability, compared to the newer 6Gb/s offerings from other manufacturers. Based on my (limited) research, this archaic chip from Silicon Image provides much better functionality – e.g. Apparently, even the ExpressCard3/4 variants of the Si3132 chip, which are widely available, work quite well with the latest drivers from Sonnet – last updated on November 29, 2011. It’s attached to my HackPro via a two-port Sonnet Tempo E2P (mini PCIe) card, so some of the information in this post will be specific to this (Silicon Image 3132-based) card. It is compact, quiet and stylish, plus: the disks can be swapped without the use of special tools/frames, which makes it very convenient. I have had zero problems with it, other than the delay in compatibility with Big Sur.Another very nice enclosure: the Sharkoon 5-bay eSATA/USB box. What I do like about SoftRaid is that it provides a continuous, simple diagnostic report on every drive in my system (six total) and monitors the health of my RAID structure. Since your ThunderBay shows up in Disk Utility, can you access it and its files? The fear of not being able to access my external files is why I have not installed Big Sur as of yet. It appears that the developer still has a lot of issues to work out before releasing the "final" version of 6.0, mostly due to changes in the Mac OS. There is a lot of good, straightforward information to be found there. The first few topics in the blog discuss the problem you mentioned for both Intel and M1 Macs, and possible workarounds. ![]() You might nose around the SoftRaid blog here: The ThunderBay icon not appearing on your desktop is a common problem with SoftRaid and Big Sur. My external drive is an OWC product, as is SoftRaid, so it is logical that SoftRaid was used to structure my external RAID 5. I cannot imagine that the installation process is any different than with most Mac apps-either drag and drop, or run an installer. ![]() SoftRaid XT is an application, so it resides on my startup SSD in the applications folder. Maybe Softraid has found clever ways to overcome the performance hit but I'd check out the read and write speeds which can really slow down your image processing against hardware RAID solutions which are pretty cheap these days or consider just a fast primary drive and daily backup approach.Ĭlick to expand.When I purchased my latest computer system a couple of years ago, my local vendor configured everything to my specifications, so I'm afraid I cannot describe the installation process. I haven't run or tested the Softraid solution but have tested various software RAID implementations over the years and have never really been impressed with the performance, particularly read and write speed performance of software RAID implementations. And of course you can back up to more than one backup storage system whether or not you're running a RAID array if you want protection against multiple drive failures. But you don't really need RAID at all as there are other approaches like just storing images on one drive and then backing up to another drive or to cloud storage which also achieves the big goal of making sure you don't lose your images with a single drive failure. Setting up a RAID array is one way to make sure you have redundant storage (depending on the RAID level chosen) but personally I prefer hardware RAID solutions that tend to be a lot faster than software RAID. Click to expand.I"d say you should have some form of storage redundancy for your image files if they're important to you.
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