SoftRAID: macOS 10.13 - Driver Fails to Load

Created on: November 2, 2020
Last updated: April 18, 2022

Problem

Some customers have noticed that their SoftRAID volume does not mount in High Sierra (10.13.x) after updating the driver. To verify this you can try the following: run SoftRAID. Look in the expanded volume tile for “Disk Identifier”. It should display a number, such as 'disk5'. If this portion of the volume tile shows only a dash (–), then the SoftRAID driver is not loading.

Cause

The SoftRAID driver is being blocked from loading by High Sierra. This happens because a limited version of the SoftRAID driver is bundled with macOS; we needed to change the Developer ID used with Apple to “notarize” OWC applications so that we could merge different accounts into one Developer ID.

Solution

There is a straightforward solution we have found. In summary we will ask you to:

1. Temporarily disable SIP (System Integrity Protection).
2. Reinstall the latest SoftRAID driver directly from the app.
3. After all is working, re-enable SIP again.

Here Are the Steps

1. Boot into Recovery mode by powering on or restarting the computer and then after the chime press and hold the Command and R keys until you see a progress screen.
   If you're unable to reach a Recovery screen via this method you can try Internet Recovery instead, which is described here.

2. Once you see the macOS Utilities window, go to the menu at the top of the screen and choose Utilities > Terminal.

3. At the prompt type the command csrutil disable then press Return or Enter.
This disables SIP (System Integrity Protection).

4. Choose Apple > Restart.

5. Once at the Desktop launch SoftRAID and update to the latest driver.
6. Restart the computer once the driver install is complete.
7. Once at the Desktop, re-boot into Recovery mode.
8. Again launch the Terminal and this time type csrutil enable then press Return or Enter.
   This re-enables SIP.
9. Again choose Apple > Restart.

Once you're back at the Desktop you should be able to resume using your SoftRAID volumes normally with High Sierra. 

Note that an Apple Security update was released in October 2020 where High Sierra may block the SoftRAID driver separately from other updates. If the update is installed and the problem occurs, the steps above will need to be re-run. Alternately, anyone who is upgrading to 10.13.x for the first time, should run both the OS update and then the security update, prior to using the above steps to get the recommended SoftRAID driver installed.