SoftRAID for Mac

User Reviews

• Safety + speed = a great product

  cat22July 27, 2013

  Pros

  In my experience as a home user, SoftRAID has demonstrated its value time and again. Do you back up your data as often as you should? I didn't think so. With two or three disks set up as a mirror, your data is continuously protected: when a disk fails, which is bound to happen from time to time, you haven't lost anything. And SoftRAID warns you when a disk is likely to fail soon. But equally important, all disks in the mirror are used concurrently for reads, so any work that depends on disk I/O, including backups, goes noticeably faster. Your machine can boot faster, applications can launch faster, and large documents can load faster. The publisher's support is prompt and conscientious. If you use your computer for anything more than recreation, this product is well worth its price for your peace of mind.

  Cons

  You do have to take the time to learn how to set up a disk array, but it's not difficult.

  Summary

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• Apple's RAID offerings are limited at best...

  TolgaSeptember 25, 2008

  Pros

  Cons

  Summary

  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />Yes, Apple does have built-in software RAID support. However having used it extensively I can say that SoftRAID is far better and far more intuitive than Apple's offering. There are two main problems with Apple's software RAID. The first is notification. It doesn't have any bells, alarms, email, etc. alerts to say "hey, your RAID slices are out of sync!" you have to periodically run Apple's Disk Utility software to see, oh, the RAID went out of sync a week ago, a drive failed, etc. In addition when attempting to rebuild a RAID set Disk Utility is as rudimentary and counter-intuitive as it gets. The biggest shortcoming of the Apple software RAID is that when rebuilding you have no idea which slice has the most current data and which fell out of sync, hence I lost a month of work on a set due to a disconnected drive, which Apple's RAID software never warned me about. SoftRAID on the otherhand, while not perfect, notifies you in the Finder as soon as there is a sync or drive problem within a RAID set. I'm still waiting for them to implement out of the box SMS or email alerts but it still trounces Apple in this regard. The software is also much more intuitive (though the interface is still a throwback to OS 9 and could also be improved for clarity). All in all there is no comparison between the two. SoftRAID is inexpensive enough that you'd have to be crazy or broke to use Apple's implementation.

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• cris (crispSofties)ÂÂ

  Siskel & EbertDecember 2, 2004

  Pros

  Cons

  Summary

  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />That's why God created 15K RPM / 8 MB RAM UltraSCSI 320/160 drives.... I run a 15K Cheetah as my boot/OS X drive and 2 SoftRaid-stripped level 0 internal IDEs as work drives, and manually mirror on to a fourth large internal drive IDE when things are slow. I'm sorry but the SCSI drives still whomp IDE for access times which are very noticeable for the caching and launching of apps, etc. the stripped IDE drives can hold their own in continuous throughput with large files, 1G and over.<br><br>My only two gripes are not being able to boot from stripped volumes and SoftRaid volumes mount as removable drives/CD's, not like regular volumes... I know, I know, it's Apple's fault. (really) THe developer is great and support is awesome, (not that you need it) because your kid could set your drives up for you with SoftRaid.

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• Impressive

  Crisp SoftiesOctober 15, 2004

  Pros

  Cons

  Summary

  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />I purchased and had some questions. I got instant and superior support. SoftRAID looks very very good, the only thing I miss is booting from a striped raid to double the performance of the startup drive. With a G5 the only bottleneck of OS X is disk performance...

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• Rock solid

  ShareWareAddictJuly 19, 2004

  Pros

  Cons

  Summary

  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />RAID is not just about mirroring your boot disc. We currently use SoftRAID to mirror production data drives as well as stripe databases with high access rates. While throwing mirroring of the server boot drive into the mix is highly desirable, SoftRAID reduces the number of backups I feel compelled to run as well as increasing the performance of our server in general. I have found SoftRAID to work exactly as advertised. I am reassured by the developer's diligence regarding boot-ability. It's one thing to have a buggy data RAID. If it's your server boot drive it better work every time and when a drive fails, you better be able to pull the bad drive offline and run from the mirror. When SoftRAID is ready to release this functionality, I will be confident, based on the quality of 3.0.2 that it will perform flawlessly.

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• I'm happy with SoftRAID

  Sam VenningMay 13, 2004

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  Summary

  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />I've been using SoftRAID for about a month and I'm <b>very</b> happy with it. I got a G4 tower, installed Mac OS 10.3 Server (unlimited) and SoftRAID. I installed a SATA PCI card and two SATA 230GB hard drives. The two SATA drives I formatted as a RAID 1 (mirror) using SoftRAID (to provide basic hardware redundancy). Shared directories on this voume serve our company (40 staff - Macs and PCs). I tested SoftRAID by taking one drive offline and then reconnecting it - resyncs just fine. SoftRAID works well, is affordable and is well documented. I don't need to boot from a SoftRAID RAID1 or RAID0 volume (I boot from the Apple formatted internal ATA drive). The setup is cheaper than an XServe/XRaid (although not as big nor is it as fast) but it serves us very well indeed. Sam Venning, Melbourne, Australia.

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• Still can't boot OSX with this product

  StephenYoung999May 13, 2004

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  Cons

  Summary

  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />I have used SoftRaid in the past and it is a very good program, but it does NOT allow you to create a mirrored array that you can boot from. I, and others, see this as a HUGE drawback. They are promising to provide "bootability" sometime in the future, but I have been waiting months for it and no sign, even with this release. I will use the program when this feature becomes available. It really is good, but in it's current form, it is worthless to me. It would be like Dantz releasing a version of Retrospect that does not allow you to write backups to any media. What is the purpose?

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• truly the finest

  poolmouseOctober 17, 2003

  Pros

  Cons

  Summary

  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />any sysadmin who's been bitten by apple's failed raid implementation will attest that softraid is a vastly superior software raid product. apple raid = terminal commands required to rebuild failed raid softraid = use the gui to rebuild apple raid = can't partition raid softrwaid = partition to your heart's desire apple raid = computer/server down until you rebuild raid softraid = replace bad drive, reboot and work while it rebuilds no comparison. price is right ($150...or $100 until nov 1st). solid reputation (apple bundled it with their servers and high end worksations in the past). softraid support is fabulous. if you need raid, get softraid. i did and i'm recommending it to all my clients and fellow tech buddies. poolmouse

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• Excellent!!

  schalliolSeptember 2, 2003

  Pros

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  Summary

  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />My experience using SoftRAID has been excellent. I noticed when using Apple's OS X RAID software that a problem had caused one of my drives to occasionally be missing upon startup. Once I converted my Seagate Ultra160 SCSI array to a RAID 0 SoftRAID array, that problem instantly vanished. This software is SOLID and has performed perfectly since the first install.

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