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Is there any cheap or free software to set up a RAID 5?
I just discovered what a RAID 5 is, and it seems the best solution to my particular needs. I want to set it up to work for the OWC Thunderbay enclosure I have. I bought this before they started bundling the SoftRAID software with it.
From my internet research, it seems like there is no way to set up a RAID 5 in Disc Utility. SoftRAID seems cool but is 179 bucks. Are there any other options that are cheaper or free?
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16 Replies
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Contact OWC. I’m pretty sure they were bundling SoftRAID from the beginning with Thunderbay enclosures although I think you could buy them without it also. Maybe they’ll give you a break. I don’t know of any other reliable RAID software for the Mac. SoftRAID has been around a while.
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And that’s really the only software to do a RAID 5? Is it the kind of thing you need once or do you need to run that software every time you use the RAID?
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RAID 5 usually requires a hardware controller. SoftRAID is a software alternative. I don’t know of any alternative to those two approaches. I use hardware RAID 5. From what I understand, software RAID 5 is not as fast.
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The bottom line then is if i want to turn my OWC Thunderbay 4 (which I already own) into a RAID 5 I need to get SoftRAID?
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If you can’t go with hardware RAID 5 anything else is going to be a compromise and SoftRAID would be my next choice. Check out their website and download the free trial before you start using your Thunderbay for real work and see how you like it
I would still contact OWC and explain the situation to them. Maybe they will cut you a break. Maybe not…
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If I decide to maybe sell the OWC Thunderbay 4 and buy a hardware RAID 5, any recs?
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Promise Pegasus is pretty much still the standard isn’t it? Of course comes with it’s own raid utility.
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I use Promise. In general they are OK but some of my systems have had drives fail more than once. They were replaced under warranty.
Performance is not always what I expected. I have seen performance in the range of high 300 to mid 400 MB/sec read/write (which I think is slow) to speeds closer to 500 MB/sec read/write. Inconsistent performance with Promise is my main issue.
Support is OK but you have to keep after them. I don’t know of anything better than Promise though. I was looking at Cal-Digit but ended up going with Promise for my most recent purchase.
I’m curious to see how it performs.
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SoftRAID will offer the software at a discount. Given the price of hardware RAID’s, I think I’m going to go for that option.
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Depends on your needs. I still do some of my work on FW800 drives with no issues.
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