Completing SoftRAID Installation

Created on: April 22, 2022
Last updated: April 12, 2024

• If you are using an Intel Mac and purchased a solution preconfigured with SoftRAID, double-click the drive icon and follow the steps below:

• If you are using an Apple Silicon Mac, download the latest version of SoftRAID, double-click on the disk image and follow the steps below:

– Drag the SoftRAID folder onto the Applications folder shortcut. Then launch SoftRAID, update the driver if prompted, and use the SoftRAID key that shipped with your OWC storage solution to activate the SoftRAID application. Depending on the solution purchased, the license key will be either on the bottom of the enclosure or behind the locked faceplate.

Important Note for both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs: when the installation is finished and SoftRAID prompts you to restart, do NOT immediately restart. Instead, proceed to complete the following steps:

1. Access Security Preferences
     a. Open System Preferences and click “Security & Privacy”.

2. Unlock settings
     a. In the General tab, click the lock icon in the bottom-left corner and enter your administrator password to unlock these settings.

3. Allow software from OWC
     a. Look for a line “System software from developer ‘Other World Computing’ was blocked from loading” and click “Allow” to enable the extension to be installed.

4. Restart system
     a. A restart is required before new system extensions can be used. If you still have an open prompt from SoftRAID to restart the system, click “Not Now” to close the prompt from the System Preferences and then click Restart on the previous prompt. Otherwise, click Restart.

• Note: No prompt
– If you do not see a line saying “System software from developer ‘Other World Computing’ was blocked from loading” you may need to restart your computer and go back to step 1 to launch SoftRAID again. This is because the system sometimes takes a few minutes to notify the system security process that it is blocking an extension.

• Tip: Check if the driver has been loaded
– You can check if the driver is loaded by connecting your RAID to the computer and then using the following command in Terminal.

• For macOS 11.1 and later:

sudo kmutil showloaded |grep SoftRAID

• For macOS 10.15.7 and before:

sudo kextstat |grep SoftRAID

If there is no response, the driver is not loaded. The output should be the same as the version you are running.

As an alternative, choose Apple menu > About This Mac > System Report. Go to Software > Extensions and wait for the extensions to load, then look for the SoftRAID extension and check if says Yes or No for Loaded.

SoftRAID Full Disk Access Setup:
After installing SoftRAID, and before launching the software, Full Disk Access will need to be granted. Please complete the following steps:

1. Open System Preferences and click “Security & Privacy”.

2. Click the “Privacy” tab.

3. Scroll down to and select “Full Disk Access”.

4. Click the Lock icon in the bottom-left corner, then enter your administrator password to unlock these settings.

5. Click the ‘+’ sign, navigate to the Applications folder, and select the SoftRAID application. Click “Open”.

6. Launch SoftRAID.

7. Additional Step for macOS 10.15 “Catalina” Users:

Run the current version of SoftRAID. Select your boot volume, and “reinstall SoftRAID driver” from the Utilities menu.