SoftRAID 5 RAID Utility Software

Purchased 2 enclosures, thunderbolt was always an issue, and the software didn't work transparently with Mac. At some point just turned it off and switched to external Thunderbolt SSD enclosure. No issues on that one.Now you have to pay $120 every year to use the software (as you HAVE TO UPGRADE for each major Mac OS Upgrade, so yeah, not optional).Straight up scam.

Currently I have had softraid working quite well for a while before a upgrade. I went to replace one bad hard drive and SoftRaid then showed 3 of my 4 hard drives (missing). After researching it it looks to be a problem a handful of people are having.There solution was there was none. All data is lost. They had me wait 4 days before they replied we read your log file and don't see any errors. You cannot re add your drives to the raid array.Recreated the same raid and now I am having the system remove permissions or folders disappearing completely. Data getting corrupted.When it works it works as intended. When it doesn't work it's a nightmare and a huge data risk. If my experience doesn't improve I will have to find another solution. Previously I used on board motherboard raid and that worked flawlessly for years. 1 month with these guys and I wish I never started.Software is basic with few options and works only half the time. Find another solution of you don't plan on backing up. You always should back up but you will likely lose your data with these guys before your even started.

Awesome software, price is high for utility software

For the longest time i have been looking for a faster storage/raid solution for my hobbies in photography and HD video. My existing raid was a NetGear NAS running RAID5 over fast ethernet - the fastest at the time but outgrown. Researching a bunch of solutions from NetGear, Drobo,etc I ended up deciding on the OWC's Thunderbolt 2 based enclosures as a good fit for my need. I planned to use the built-in RAID support on my mac (disk utility) but read a review (link somewhere on OWC) about SoftRAID - installed the evaluation license and after a few performance benchmarks i was hooked. With a few days left on the evaluation license i purchased the software. Some complain about the price, I think it is worth every dollar.Some observations after one month of usage:* Love the speed, cannot get enough.* Recovery of a disk take some serious time (1/2 day) but the setup can be used - yeah i added my old NetGear 2T drives; i suspected one of the drive to be close to sunset and the software quickly pointed this out (grr).* I have a bunch USB3 drives (5x 3-4Tb drives) connected also and often use Apple disc utility for managing these - there seems to be some funny business between SoftRAID and the utility so I pretty much move all my disc'ing around to the SoftRAID software.* Next project is to move 4 of my USB3 drives to another RAID5 setup - yeah baby you can do that.* After that the project will be to benchmark the software with OWC Thunderbay 2 Mini loaded with SDD's.

The product is slow. I purchased with SoftRaid 5.8.4 and SoftRaid 6 was in beta. They had shipped, but I asked them to return the product. I had not received the shipment and I had not opened it. They flat out refused. Then when SoftRaid 6 came out, which is required for Big Sur, they charged me $50 for an upgrade. Now I had to upgrade to use it on Big Sur (which was my goal from the get-go). So, I paid them, and at that point, I was out $220 plus tax.Even worse, when I got it, and I configured my Raid, my performance was in the 300 MB range (Read and Write) for three very fast 2.5" SSDs. This was on a Sabrent JBOD 10Gbps 5 Bay unit. I have a QNAP Raid with slow 5400 RPM drives (typically they top out at 120 MB) and I was getting 550 Read, 300 MB write, so I was expecting much, much better from my software raid with SoftRaid. After all, these drives top out at 550 Read, 520+ write.When I tried to talk with tech support, that was impossible, and they used Covid as an excuse. Okay fine, but via email support is, of course, much slower. Their tech guy had me go through several iterations (all via email) of tearing down the RAID I'd built using different configurations and we always ended up at the same place. Poor speed with SoftRaid.Finally out of desperation, I configured a RAID5 using Windows 10 (which I have on my Mac), and got decent numbers: 600 read and 550 write. Not great, but decent. But then I was obviously not using SoftRaid, I was using Windows own built-in Raid software, which isn't the best. But it works.Then, back on my Mac I configured my three SSDs as a Raid 0 using the Mac Raid Assistant. My speeds were excellent; 940 write and 650 read. What that means is that the hardware can produce 10Gbps speed, given the right software. The Windows result, and this result, means that the hardware can produce excellent speed as long as you use the right software.The tech guy continued to try and blame my hardware, talking about "latency" on my box. The guy works hard but as his goal is to blame my hardware. I have an email from him in which he clearly states that his goal was to show me the problem was my hardware. At that point, after tearing down my Raid numerous, numerous times, I realized pursuing this with him was useless.I'm now out over $220 on SoftRaid, and I wish I'd never ever bought it. And, my $220 plus tax software purchase is sitting around doing nothing, because I'm not using it. My recommendation - Do Not Buy!From here on in, I will be avoiding purchases from OWC in the future. (I've been a customer of them for over 10 years, but no longer). A complete waste of time and money. I repeat, Do NOT Buy!