SoftRAID Issues with External Drive: Troubleshooting Guide

When encountering issues with your external drive, it's essential to understand the root cause of the problem. In this article, we'll explore common SoftRAID errors and provide steps to troubleshoot and resolve them.

Recently, I experienced an issue where my iMac restarted after SoftRAID reported a disk failure. Upon restarting, the Finder was hanging with an interrupted file transfer. This raised concerns about the reliability of my external drive setup. In this article, we'll examine possible causes and solutions for similar issues.

Enclosure or Disk Problem?

If you notice errors persisting in a specific slot, it's likely due to a problem within the enclosure. Swap the disk with another one as a test to rule out any issues related to the disk itself. If the errors occur regardless of the disk used in that slot, it may indicate a communication channel issue (bus, cable, or enclosure).

Certifying Disks

To ensure reliable read/write operations on your drives, I recommend 'certifying' them using SoftRAID. This process involves testing the drives for any issues and verifying their reliability.

Understanding SoftRAID Error Messages

SoftRAID reports all IO errors and logs some events in its log. However, it only enters a limited number of error messages to prevent the log from filling up quickly. Screenshots of error messages and SoftRAID windows can help identify the source of the issue.

My Experience: A Possible Solution

In my case, I had 10 IO errors on one disk before it was marked as failed by SoftRAID. After restarting my iMac and updating to macOS 12.2, the disk showed no IO errors or reallocated sectors. I updated the OS and launched SoftRAID, which reported a disk failure with multiple read/write errors.

To resolve this issue, I initialized and verified four brand-new WD 2TB Black drives using SoftRAID before creating a RAID 5 volume in an OWC Thunderbay enclosure on my Late 2015 iMac. This process involved creating a new volume in SoftRAID and verifying the disk integrity.

SoftRAID errors can be caused by various factors, including enclosure or disk problems. By following these steps and understanding SoftRAID's error messages, you can troubleshoot and resolve issues related to your external drive setup. Remember to certify your disks using SoftRAID and initialize new drives before creating a volume.

If you're experiencing similar issues with your external drive, I recommend taking the time to understand the root cause of the problem and implementing the necessary steps to resolve it.

Softraid 6.2 1