Important Steps to Protect Your RAID 4/5 Volumes With SSDs (Mac only)

This is an important notice for all users running RAID 4 or RAID 5 volumes with NVMe or SSD drives.

With the release of SoftRAID 8.0, we fixed a driver bug that could lead to file corruption if an NVMe or SSD fails or is replaced in a RAID 4 or RAID 5 volume. To ensure your volumes are protected by this fix, you must take the steps below based on your macOS version.

We have created a short video describing this problem and the steps you need to take to protect your RAID 4 and 5 volumes. We strongly recommend watching it before proceeding.

For macOS 15.0 and Later

After upgrading to macOS 15, validate your RAID 4 or 5 volumes to ensure correct parity data. This step only needs to be done once after upgrading.

For macOS 14.7.4 and Earlier

Two steps are required:

• Disable TRIM for your SoftRAID volumes
• Validate your RAID 4 or 5 volumes to ensure correct parity data

The validate step only needs to be done once after disabling TRIM.

Speeding Up the Validation

Validation can take some time depending on your volume size. For faster completion, set the volume optimization to Workstation or Server before validating:

• Click the volume tile to select the volume
• Volume menu → Optimize for → select Workstation or Server

You can change the optimization setting at any time — including while a validate or rebuild operation is already in progress — and the change takes effect immediately.

Why This Matters

RAID 4 and RAID 5 volumes rely on accurate parity data to recover from a disk failure. The bug fixed in SoftRAID 8.0 could result in incorrect parity being written when an NVMe or SSD fails or is replaced – meaning a subsequent disk failure could result in data corruption rather than a successful rebuild. Validating your volume after following the steps above ensures your parity data is correct and your volume is fully protected.