SoftRAID Feature: Accelerated Rebuilds

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

This version of SoftRAID includes an upgraded RAID architecture. At its heart is a RAID engine, a software emulation of a RAID controller which has allowed us to add RAID 4, RAID 5, and RAID 1+0 volumes to SoftRAID version 6.

Unlike most RAID controllers, this RAID engine can actually perform many RAID operations at exactly the same time. The number of simultaneous RAID operations is limited only by the number of processors in your Mac. With SoftRAID, the latest Mac Pros which have up to 12 cores and HyperThreading can actually perform 24 simultaneous RAID operations.

In addition, the RAID engine keeps track of not only which disks are out of sync in a volume, but also which parts of those disks need rebuilding. If you only write to the first 1% of a volume while a disk is disconnected, then only that 1% will be rebuilt when the disk gets reattached. This dramatically reduces volume rebuild times; a 16 TB volume can usually be rebuilt in under 10 minutes (with 10 – 30 GB of changes).