What is SoftRAID’s anonymous data collection and can I opt-out?

SoftRAID includes an optional anonymous data collection feature to help us improve the product and better predict disk failures. This feature is opt-in only — no data is collected unless you explicitly choose to participate.

Why We Collect This Data

Over the years, we have learned a great deal about why disks fail and how to anticipate failure before a disk catastrophically stops working. This knowledge has developed into one of SoftRAID’s most powerful features: Predictive Failure, which allows you to detect and replace disks before they actually fail.

SSDs, NVMe, and other flash technologies do not have the same failure patterns as rotating hard drives. Flash manufacturers provide some basic health indicators — such as a media wear indicator showing when an SSD is running out of writable blocks — but reliable predictive failure technology for flash storage does not yet exist. By collecting anonymous disk data, we hope to discover patterns that will allow us to predict flash drive failures in the future, benefiting all SoftRAID users.

We are also collecting usage data to help guide product development — for example, understanding which RAID levels are most commonly used, which macOS versions our users are running, and how often certain issues like Thunderbolt disk ejections occur. This helps us prioritize features and report real-world issues to Apple when needed.

We intend to publish our findings! If we identify drive models with unusually high failure rates, we will share that information publicly so users can make more informed purchasing decisions.

What We Collect

We collect:

• SoftRAID version and configuration
• Disk health data (SMART statistics, drive models, hours of use, RAID types)
• Usage patterns (volume sizes, disk types, RAID levels in use)
• Environmental data (macOS version, amount of RAM, computer model, enclosure types)

We do NOT collect:

• Any data that can identify a user
• Email addresses
• Computer serial numbers or MAC addresses
• Geo-location data
• User identifiers of any kind
• Any files or file contents
• Any personal data whatsoever

This also means that if we detect a specific problem with your drives, we will not be able to notify you individually — but we believe your privacy is more important.

All collected data is completely anonymous, will never be sold, and will never be shared with third parties.

How to Opt In or Out

You can enable or disable anonymous data sharing at any time in SoftRAID menu → Settings → Application.