Steven Smith wrote: > SSD RAID offers speed and fault tolerance. > > Simple options that are tolerant to a single disk failure are: > > * Free/one extra SSD: Use macOS Disk Utility to RAID 1 together two > smaller, inexpensive SSD drives for 100% redundancy. > * OWC ThunderBay 4 Mini, $279: Use macOS Disk Utility to RAID 1 > together four smaller, inexpensive SSD drives for 100% redundancy > and larger capacity. > * OWC ThunderBay 4 Mini with SoftRAID, $379: Use SoftRAID to RAID > 4 together four smaller, inexpensive SSD drives for 100% redundancy > and even larger capacity. (Caveats: no encryption, no boot volumes.)
OWC ThunderBay is a bad solution for the hardware specified unless one is able to get - OpenCore - GigaByte Titan Ridge to work https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gigabyte+gc-titan+ridge+mac+pro+5+1+ The xServe only has - USB 480 MBit - FireWire 800 MBit which is far slower than the internal bays I'm presently trying to get this to work on my MacPro 2010. As to SoftRaid I simply can't recommend it. I've bought a full license, and after trying it out, I've had to un-install it again, as it made my whole system x10 slower when accessing my existing disks. SoftRaid 1) is fundamentally incompatible with any usage of APFS I had 2 x 18 TB HDs in AppleRAID-1 with APFS and several sub-volumes After installing SoftRaid, the read/write speed was reduced by a factor 10 2) only supports HFS+ according to my correspondance with OWC, they've no present plans for supporting APFS Presently, I'm using OpenZFS on Mac on 4 x 6 TB HDs in RAIDZ-1 #=> cat createZFS diskutil unmountdisk force disk4 diskutil unmountdisk force disk5 diskutil unmountdisk force disk6 diskutil unmountdisk force disk7 # set ashift to 13 when using SSD zpool create \ -f \ -o ashift=12 \ -O casesensitivity=sensitive \ -O normalization=formD \ -O compression=lz4 \ BjarneZFS raidz1 \ /dev/disk3 /dev/disk4 /dev/disk5 /dev/disk6 zpool set feature@encryption=enabled BjarneZFS zfs create \ -o encryption=on \ -o keylocation=prompt \ -o keyformat=passphrase \ BjarneZFS/MesterD zfs create BjarneZFS/BDMdata zfs create BjarneZFS/Bjarne zfs create BjarneZFS/EyeTV zfs create BjarneZFS/HomeMesterD zfs set quota=1G BjarneZFS/HomeMesterD # this is for the Guest account # you'll have to modify the Guest user using dscl zfs create BjarneZFS/HomeGuest zfs set quota=1G BjarneZFS/HomeGuest zfs create \ -o recordsize=16k \ BjarneZFS/MySQL8 ---------------------------------------- OpenZFS has a better read cache than macOS : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_replacement_cache I've got 2 x 4 TB HDs in the DVD-bays /dev/disk2 & /dev/disk3 (internal, physical): #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: GUID_partition_scheme *4.0 TB disk2 1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk2s1 2: Apple_APFS Container disk10 500.0 GB disk2s2 3: Apple_RAID 3.5 TB disk2s3 4: Apple_Boot Boot OS X 134.2 MB disk2s4 /dev/disk10 (synthesized): #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0:APFS Container Scheme - +500.0 GB disk10 Physical Store disk2s2 1: APFS Volume Mojave 001 91.0 GB disk10s1 2: APFS Volume Catalina 011 - Data 88.7 GB disk10s2 3: APFS Volume Catalina 011 12.6 GB disk10s3 4: APFS Volume Preboot 182.3 MB disk10s4 5: APFS Volume Recovery 1.6 GB disk10s5 6: APFS Volume VM 1.1 MB disk10s6 7: APFS Volume Big Sur - Data 86.0 GB disk10s7 8: APFS Volume Big Sur 12.5 GB disk10s8 /dev/disk7 (internal, virtual): #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: Apple_APFS +3.5 TB disk7 /dev/disk11 (synthesized): #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0:APFS Container Scheme - +3.5 TB disk11 Physical Store disk7 1: APFS Volume VMs 2.1 TB disk11s1 2: APFS Volume NyProg 148.8 GB disk11s2 3: APFS Volume Buffer 197.7 MB disk11s3 I haven't trid zvol + APFS, but I might try that at a later date I've got 4 x original MiniStack, that at present has 2.5" 250 GB HDs that I'll upgrade to 1 TB HDs. When I get these, I'll try to see what happens with zvol + APFS -- Bjarne D Mathiesen Korsør ; Danmark ; Europa ----------------------------------------------------------------------- denne besked er skrevet i et totalt M$-frit miljø OpenCore + macOS 10.15.7 Cataina MacPro 2010 ; 2 x 3,46 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon ; 128 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC ATI Radeon RX 590 8 GB