1. Non-RAID, or standard, used the same as standard Apple volumes,

2. RAID 0, or Stripe Volumes, used for high speed data access with video, audio and graphics applications,

3. RAID 1, or Mirror Volumes, used for instantaneous backup and offsite archiving.

Non-RAID and Mirror volumes can both contain Mac OS X and be used as startup volumes. The disks which are part of SoftRAID volumes can hold one or more SoftRAID volumes shared with other disks.

For example, you may have 3 disks, A, B, and C. You can have a SoftRAID Stripe volume using 1/2 the free space of all the disks, a Mirror volume which takes up 1/3 the free space of disks A and B, and then your non-RAID startup volume can be on disk C.

If you are converting an Apple non-RAID volume to a SoftRAID volume, it will take up the entire capacity of the disk. To avoid this, you can copy your data to another disk, reinitialize the Apple disk with the SoftRAID driver, create new volumes of a more appropriate size and then copy back on your data.

SoftRAID 3.5 vs. Apple's RAID and Apple Disk Utility

What are the Benefits of SoftRAID's software RAID solution over Apple's free RAID solution?

Flexibility, Reliability, and Usability are the three main distinctions between Apple's Disk Utility and SoftRAID 3.5. Apple's Disk Utility includes a basic RAID capability but does not offer the flexibility of combining volume types on a disk and changing volume configurations. Disk Utility's usability is limited by its no-frills interface and command line rebuild procedures, and its reliability is reduced by its absence of error checking and reporting.

SoftRAID 3.5 gives you a full-featured application which reports to you on the status of your volumes even when the application is not running. It's easy-to-use interface provides all the information you need for the seamless creation and maintenance of your RAID and non-RAID volumes.

SoftRAID 3.5 Features and Specifications

Below is an extensive and detailed list of SoftRAID 3.5 Features and Specifications.

The current shipping version is SoftRAID 3.5

SoftRAID Core Technology:

• Application and Driver were written exclusively for Mac OS X 100% new code.
• Entire application and driver written using Cocoa™.
• Native Mac OS X disk driver.
• Partition based volume management.

Requirements:

• Mac OS X 10.2 or higher.
• Requires Mac OS computer with built-in PPC G3, G4 or G5 processor.
• Requires OS X 10.2 updated PCI firmware for SCSI and ATA cards.
• Requires 2 or more drives for SoftRAID.
• Notes:
  • Older Macintosh computers (G3/G4 upgraded) that run Mac OS X 10.2 usually work, but we can not "officially" support them.
  • Requires modern FireWire bus (Ti/Oxford) for best operation (Beige G3 and the B&W G3 are not
  • good machines to run FireWire drives with SoftRAID.)
  • First generation FireWire drives are NOT supported, they may generate I/O errors. These drives contain the LSI firmware bridge chip. All FireWire drives with the Oxford or Ti chipsets are supported with SoftRAID.
  • SoftRAID 3.5 does not support Mac OS 9, meaning that any volume created by SoftRAID 3.5 or converted to SoftRAID 3.5 will not be available if you boot into Mac OS 9. (this has no effect on "classic mode").
    

SoftRAID 3.5 GUI:

• Multi-threaded, modern interface.
• "Permissions based" application, follows all Mac OS X password and permissions guidelines.
• Graphic links between disks and volumes.
• Volume tiles which give information on the state of the volume.
• Disk tiles which give information on disks, and their state.
• All elements updated in real time, as new disks and volumes appear.

SoftRAID 3.5 Features:

• Supports non-RAID, RAID 0 (Stripe) and RAID 1 (Mirror) volumes.
• Supports creation of non-RAID and Mirror startup volumes.
• Supports ATA, SATA, SCSI, Fibre Channel, FireWire 400 & 800, and USB 1 & 2.
• Supports any mix of drives and volume types in a system.
• Supports creation and deletion of volumes without affecting existing volumes.
• Supports up to 16TB volume size.
• Supports all Mac OS X compatible PCI cards with device buses, such as FibreChannel, FireWire, ATA, and SCSI cards.
• Supports moving existing volumes to new CPU's.
• Supports moving drives to different buses (moving ATA disks with existing volumes into FireWire cases, for instance).
• RAID 0 supports up to 16 disks per volume.
• RAID 0 can be optimized for Servers, Workstation, Digital Video, Digital Audio.
• RAID 0 supports 32, 64 or 128K "stripe unit size" increments.
• RAID 1 monitors status of Mirror volumes at all times, notifying users whether volumes are "Optimal", "Out-of-Sync", "Failed", or "Missing Secondary".
• RAID 1 supports up to 15 secondary disks per Mirror volume.
• RAID 1 supports creation of "Read-only secondary" drives.
• RAID 1 supports adding and removing disks without initializing disks.
• RAID 1 volumes can automatically initiate rebuilds.

SoftRAID Application:

• Gives an overall view of all disks and volumes.
• Display's SoftRAID version and driver version loaded in main window.
• Displays links to/from volumes and disks by clicking on them.
• Expandable tiles for volumes and disks, displays information detail on disks: bus, ID, size, free space, drive model, serial number, I/O requests, and I/O errors; and on volumes: volume name, volume size, file system, RAID type, RAID status, optimization, journaling enabled/disabled, I/O requests, I/O errors.
• Displays active driver version, and application version.
• Displays bay numbers on Apple Xserve.
• Creates RAID 1, RAID 0 and non-RAID volumes, on any combination of disks.

Disks functions:

• Initialize disk drives.
• Zero disk, either first 100 sectors or entire disk.
• Convert to SoftRAID 3.5 - can convert OS 9 controlled disks to SoftRAID 3.5, both Apple and SoftRAID controlled disks.
• Exclusive "Blink Disk Light" feature to help identify disks.

Volume functions:

• Can create volumes optimized for Digital Video, Digital Audio, Servers and Workstation.
• Can create HFS, UFS, and Case Sensitive HFS file systems on volumes.
• Can erase any volume without deleting it (useful for scratch volumes).
• Delete volumes.
• Mount volumes.
• Enable/disable file system Journaling on any SoftRAID volume.
• Rebuild Mirror volumes.
• Set Mirror primary disk.
• Split Mirror function, can split a mirror into non-RAID, "Read-only secondary" volume, or if 2 or more disks are split, split off a Mirror volume.
• Recover a Failed Mirror volume when a volume fails due to I/O errors.
• Add Secondary Disk to existing Mirror.
• Remove Missing Secondary disks from existing Mirror.
• Convert Read-only Secondary disk to non RAID volume, or rebuild the ROS to its original Mirror volume.
• Convert non-RAID volume to Mirror volume.

Utility functions:

• Clear I/O counters, by selected disks or volumes.
• Show System Log file to search for problems or when I/O errors occurred.
• Cancel functions, such as zero disk, or Mirror rebuilds.
• Uninstall the SoftRAID driver from the system.
  

Preference controlled functions:

• SoftRAID Application.
  • Require Administration password to launch SoftRAID.
  • Remember window positions.
  • Display Completion Dialogs.
  • Open/Close disk and Volume tiles by default.
• Driver.
  • Write Volume errors to System Console log.
  • Record recoverable errors.
  • Use all disks for mirror reads.
  • Automatically rebuild Mirror volumes.
  • Save I/O counts to disk at shutdown or restart.
  • Save I/O counts at intervals (1 min, 10 min, 1 hour, 24 hours).
  • Mirror Volume secondary timeout (15 sec, 1 min, 2 min).
• Monitor.
  • Options to display/not display various notifications.
  • Mirrors Volume is out of Sync.
  • Mirror Volumes rebuild is done.
  • Mirror Volume is missing secondary.
  • Disk has an error.
  • Disk has a recoverable error.

Partition Limits:

• 16 disks per RAID volume (Stripe or Mirror).
• 60 partitions per disk.
  

SoftRAID 3.5 Compatibility

General Compatibility

• SoftRAID 3.5 requires Mac OS X 10.2 or later. Certain CD creation features will only run on 10.3 or later.
• SoftRAID 3.5 supports SCSI, FireWIRE, ATA, Serial-ATA, Fibre Channel and USB drives.
• SoftRAID 3.5 volumes are available via file sharing to others on network, including file sharing to Mac OS 9 clients.
• SoftRAID 3.5 is compatible with disk utilities such as Disk Warrior, Drive 10, Data Rescue, Tech Tool Pro.
• SoftRAID 3.5 allows you to modify disk utility CD-ROMs which contain Mac OS X 10.3 or later. Disk Warior 3.2, Tech Tool Pro 4.03 and Drive 10 1.15 CD-ROMs are all compatible for modification.

Version 3 Limitations

• SoftRAID Stripe volumes cannot be startup volumes.
• SoftRAID 3.5 volumes will not mount when booted in Mac OS 9.

PCI Card Compatibility

SoftRAID 3.5 is generally compatible with SCSI, ATA , SATA, FireWire, USB 2.0 and FibreChannel PCI cards. SoftRAID 3.5 is also compatible with built-in FireWire on G4/G5 computers, and built-in USB 2.0. If you have any doubts about a PCI card you want to use with SoftRAID 3.5, check with the manufacturer to see if they have an OS X compatible update for their products.

Note: Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) has had reports of compatibility problems with many of the major manufacturers of PCI SCSI cards, including Adaptec and ATTO. If you use SCSI drives, and want to run Mac OS X 10.3, check with the manufacturer's website for compatibility information.

Drive Compatibility

SoftRAID 3.5 is compatible with all standard storage devices (disk drives) which operate on a supported storage bus - SCSI, ATA , SATA, FireWire, USB 2.0 and FibreChannel. Manufacturers we have tested with include:

• Maxtor
• Western Digital
• Seagate
• IBM/Hitachi
• Fujitsu

FireWire Compatibility

Note: SoftRAID 3.5 is compatible with FireWire drives sold today but is not recommended with older FireWire drives or the built in Firewire on older machines.

SoftRAID 3.5 is compatible with:

• FireWire drives/enclosures equipped with the "Oxford", "Initio" or "Ti" chipsets.

SoftRAID 3.5 is not compatible with:

• The first generation FireWire drives which use the "LSI chipset". The LSI chipset has serious problems with reliability under heavy load and devices using this chipset and will cause I/O errors.
• FireWire buses on all Power Macintosh G3 CPU's. You can use Firewire on a G3 if you purchase a FireWire PCI card that supports Lynx.