OWC SoftRAID V5.6 RAID Software for MacOS X

OWC Holdings, Inc., a division of OWC, announced the SoftRAID v. 5.6 RAID software featuring SoftRAID ‘Easy Setup’, which makes it easy to create a RAID system from scratch to keep your files protected against disk failure and achieve faster data access.

SoftRAID’s software RAID system is for everyone who needs to safely store and backup massive amounts of data, including photographers, videographers, editors, audio producers, database and media managers, advertisers, archivers, and more.

SoftRAID’s ‘Easy Setup’ guides less technical users through the process of creating RAID volumes, automating the process of configuring disks and making recommendations to help users setup their SoftRAID system. All users have to do is decide what the RAID volume will be used for and how much space to use (with hints from the application) – SoftRAID Easy Setup does the rest.

Additional new features in SoftRAID include the ability to monitor USB and FireWire disks for failure and impending failure and translation to Simplified Chinese (for both the application and documentation), in addition to the five other languages SoftRAID already supports: English, French, German, Spanish and Japanese.

SoftRAID is available to purchase from the company webstore for SoftRAID lite at $49 and the full SoftRAID at $179. A 30 day fully functional free trial of SoftRAID or SoftRAID Lite is available to download.

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Features in SoftRAID-5.6:

SoftRAID Easy Setup: helper application guides less technical users through the process of creating SoftRAID volumes.
SMART over USB proprietary driver: extends disk checking and monitoring to most USB drives, including most USB 3/3.1 and many USB 2 drives, FireWire enclosures and FireWire 400/800 connected drives.
Supports six languages: now translated to Simplified Chinese, in addition to English, French, German, Spanish, and Japanese.
Supports Thunderbolt 3 devices: with sustained throughput of over 2.5GB/s on a single Thunderbolt 3 bus. You can use two ThunderBolt 3 buses at the same time and create a volume which can read and write at over 4GB/s.
Email notifications: updated to support recent security enhancements in SMTP servers, includes support for almost all third party email servers.
Quick start guides: updated for both SoftRAID and SoftRAID Lite to include an entire section on using SoftRAID Easy Setup.
Features improved failover handling: in the event of Mirror (RAID-0), RAID-4, RAID-5, and RAID-1+0 disk failure scenarios.
Extends disk certification: to all 4Kn (4 KB sector) drives.
Compatible with following versions of Mac OS X: from 10.6.8 through Mac OS 10.12 (Sierra).
Includes bug fixes: details of which can be found in the release notes.

General SoftRAID features:

Support for all Intel based Macs with Core Duo 2 processors or later.
Supports Thunderbolt 1, 2 and 3, eSATA, SAS, FireWire and USB 2.0, 3.0, 3.1 and USB-C.
Converts AppleRAID stripe (RAID-0) and mirror (RAID-1) volumes to SoftRAID.
Supports RAID-0, 1, 4, 5 and 1+0 (and non-RAID volumes) – (RAID-4, 5 and 1+0 volumes not available with SoftRAID Lite).
Supports TRIM (for SSDs) on all SoftRAID RAID levels.
All SoftRAID volumes can be start-up volumes.
Supports volumes up to 4PB.
Supports up to 16 disks per volume and up to 32 volumes per Mac.
Automatic rebuilding of out-of-sync RAID volumes.
Fast Rebuilds for accelerated rebuild times.
Disk error reporting: SoftRAID monitors and logs all disk errors (often ignored by Mac OS).
Email notifications (not available with SoftRAID Lite).
Predictive failure analysis: gives advance warning of imminent disk failure on all disks which support SMART, most USB 3, 3.1 and USB C disks (enclosures) and also many USB 2.0, FireWire 400 and 800 disks.
Certify Disk: guarantees disk reliably read and write data (destructive, ideal for new disks).
Verify Disk: ensures entire disk can be read (non-destructive test for any-time use).
Validate volume: confirms entire volume is readable and all parity data is correct.
I/O and error counters for every SoftRAID disk and volume.
Extended disk information, including hours of use, reallocated sector counts and media wear for SSDs.
Disk labeling and LED blinking to aid in disk identification.
Extensive logging of SoftRAID events.
Command line interface with dedicated man page (CLI not available with SoftRAID Lite).
Built-in recovery tools for recovering severely damaged partition maps.

Pricing:

SoftRAID version 5.6 is available as a fully functional 30-day free trial, with pricing at $179, Apple Certified Consultants, and retail outlets worldwide. It includes one year of free technical support via email.
In addition, SoftRAID Lite is available for $49 and includes support via online forum. SoftRAID Lite supports only non-RAID, stripe (RAID-0) and mirror (RAID-1) volumes. Users of SoftRAID version 4 can purchase an upgrade to version 5.6 for $89. SoftRAID requires Intel running Mac OS X 10.6.8 or later. Support for TRIM commands on SSDs require Mac OS X 10.7.5 or later.
SoftRAID tech support is available nights and on weekends, in addition to standard hours.