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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Anyone using SoftRAID?

M

Mike Halper

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Currently I’m running an 8-Drive RAID array with an Atto R608. To scale down the size of my computer setup I’m thinking about putting the drives in an external enclosure and running the arrray using SoftRAID. Curious if anyone has tried that and how well it works for editing video. I currently get about 1.1GB/s read and write with RAID5. I could be okay with a reduction in speed. More concerned about reliability, but would still like at least 500MB/s and hopefully 800MB/s. Would run RAID5 (I have multiple backups of all data).
 
Don’t do it. I’ll admit that I have not used SoftRAID in the past 4 years or so, but it just never worked worth a crap for anything serious.

If you put the drives in an external enclosure, you still need to connect it to some sort of host interface on your computer. So not sure what it is you’re trying to gain here. Or more to the point: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Or if you simply can’t help it and must tinker with this, how are you planning to connect the drives externally? And why can’t you have proper RAID functionality for that?

SoftRAID works best for real small and simple internal RAID arrangements. And even then, I can’t say that I’m a fan. Or I was not the last few times I tried using it.
 
I've used Softraid for about 10 years, but only for two drive Raids, mostly running Raid1 as my primary projects drive. Basically for everything but scratch. In my opinion, for any Raid using more than 4 disks you really should be using something with a hardware Raid controller.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
Don’t do it. I’ll admit that I have not used SoftRAID in the past 4 years or so, but it just never worked worth a crap for anything serious.
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I agree. Anecdotally, I think a hardware RAID solution is a lot more reliable, particularly if you wind up having to rebuild.
 
Thanks guys. I'll stick with a hardware RAID solution. That was my thinking until I read articles saying SoftRAID was faster than hardware RAID because of modern CPU's. But it didn't really make that much sense to me, especially when I am frequently pushing system performance with rendering. That's why I wanted to check here.

Jeff, the plan was to get a JBOD enclosure that holds 8 drives and create the SoftRAID with that. Something like this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/ORICO-8-Bay...hash=item1a315ddbe1:m:mPIHv6oNbvIricRWpxodmqg They do have a RAID version coming out at some point too. But I'll probably end up going with a Highpoint or Areca enclosure later down the line when I upgrade to a system with Thunderbolt 3 or higher, or if a USB 3.1 gen 2 version with 8 bays comes out at some point. Still not sure why there are no driverless RAID controllers for external RAID arrays being made with 8 drive capability.

Regarding RAID 5... been using RAID5 arrays consistently for over 11 years now and have never had a single issue. I made a mistake with my current one where a drive got disconnected (my fault, I knocked it loose tinkering inside and didn't realize it before turning it on) and the array became degraded and I had to rebuild. Several hours later it was back to normal, no data issues or anything. I've seen many articles against RAID5, and quite frankly I don't see any issues with it. I don't use RAID5 as a backup solution. I keep at least 2 other backups of all data, so I'm not concerned about data loss. I do it for performance reasons and if there is a drive failure a rebuild (if it works) is quicker than copying all the data from backups. That said, I would consider RAID0 for a performance increase if it was needed.
 
Mike Halper said:
Regarding RAID 5... been using RAID5 arrays consistently for over 11 years now and have never had a single issue. I made a mistake with my current one where a drive got disconnected (my fault, I knocked it loose tinkering inside and didn't realize it before turning it on) and the array became degraded and I had to rebuild. Several hours later it was back to normal, no data issues or anything. I've seen many articles against RAID5, and quite frankly I don't see any issues with it. I don't use RAID5 as a backup solution. I keep at least 2 other backups of all data, so I'm not concerned about data loss. I do it for performance reasons and if there is a drive failure a rebuild (if it works) is quicker than copying all the data from backups. That said, I would consider RAID0 for a performance increase if it was needed.
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You have the link to calculate the risk.
 
My experiences are nowhere near as deep as Jeff's are, but I have been using softraid for years now with no problems. I had a hardware raid years ago and it failed on me multiple times.
 
Misha Engel said:
You have the link to calculate the risk.
Click to expand...

That's just it. It's calculated risk... basically theory. I'll go with my 11+ years of RAID5 experience. No issues. No files lost. Not a single one. And I use it every day. Actually, I've had 5 different RAID arrays set up over the last 11+ years. The only catastrophic failure was the hardware controller on one went bad and needed to be replaced. It wasn't a drive issue, bit error, or anything like that. Had I been running RAID0, RAID1, RAID6, RAID10, or any other RAID type the controller would still have died. And should something go wrong, I have multiple backups to restore the data from, always.
 
Daniel Kelly Brown said:
My experiences are nowhere near as deep as Jeff's are, but I have been using softraid for years now with no problems. I had a hardware raid years ago and it failed on me multiple times.
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Could you go into more detail with your experience? SoftRAID version, drives, RAID type, performance, etc.? Thanks!
 
ive been using unRAID for nearly a decade.. have several raid servers running it.. its solid!!! dont know about SoftRAID...
 
Using ZFS raidz3 + 1 hot spare (12 drives), also a sort of softraid.
Currently investigation to invest in two 500 TB ZFS-servers (on separate locations).
 
Been using softraid in an 8 drive RAID5, haven't had an issue till recent, we are 1.5 drives available as far as space, but we're running into speed issues. We had been good at about 1.2GB/s till a week or two ago. We've been running it for about 2yrs now. We're planning to move on to an unraid or freenas box soon with 24 drives.
 
Derek Morrison said:
Been using softraid in an 8 drive RAID5, haven't had an issue till recent, we are 1.5 drives available as far as space, but we're running into speed issues. We had been good at about 1.2GB/s till a week or two ago. We've been running it for about 2yrs now. We're planning to move on to an unraid or freenas box soon with 24 drives.
Click to expand...

SoftRAID does recommend only utilizing the first 30-50% of the hard drives for video editing. https://www.softraid.com/pages/support/faq/faq_volumes.html

But you were getting 1.2GB/s until about a week ago, with how much space being used up until that point? How many TB's is the RAID array? And what enclosure were you using for the drives?
 
Mike Halper said:
Could you go into more detail with your experience? SoftRAID version, drives, RAID type, performance, etc.? Thanks!
Click to expand...

I have been running softraid on OWC 4bay thunderbay enclosures pretty much since they were released say 4 years ago. I have had ZERO problems of my own with it, no drive fail, mostly raid 0. Before that I had a 8bay raid with a really expensive raid card in a g5 tower. It had the most junky interface out of any software I have come across, especially when compared with softraid. The raid would constantly need to be rebuilt.

I had a client that has 4 of them and they did not know its key to leave 20-30% free on any drive, especially a raid. So one of their OWC thunderbay's had a drive fail. I got hired to fix the drive for them. I had a few questions about how to best go about swapping the drive so I emailed the Softraid support. It was INSANE how fast they responded, literally 2 minutes later. If everyone had such amazing support the would would be a special place indeed:) Got the drive swapped and took of some stuff on the raid and its back up and running strong.

I hear softraid 6 is coming out soon to support a 6bay OWC tunderbolt 3 raid that also should be released soon. If you can wait for that, I would.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s30HNoIZUck

Hope that helps,
Danny.
 
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