RAID is back

[h9826790]

Just play around the disk utility in 10.12. And found that RAID is coming back.

 

[Apple_Robert]

It was talked about on the front page yesterday.

https://www.macrumors.com/2016/06/14/macos-sierra-tidbits/

 

[h9826790]

Oh, thanks! I miss that.

 

[grahamperrin]

… front page …

Also in a little things topic –

I can't believe that RAID is back. Maybe Apple does listen once in a blue moon. …

Context:

• no RAID or RAID-like support is planned for APFS.

 

[Brad9893]

Also in a little things topic –



Context:

• no RAID or RAID-like support is planned for APFS.

Perhaps I spoke too soon then. I wonder why they added RAID Assistant in Sierra if they plan on completely deprecating it going forward and it has no future?

 

[Acidsplat]

Not exactly sure what this means for RAID's future in macOS, but this is what the currently available public information on Apple's site says about it.

 

[Brad9893]

Not exactly sure what this means for RAID's future in macOS, but this is what the currently available public information on Apple's site says about it.

APFS seems to be feature incomplete right now. It does not support boot volumes or Time Machine, for instance, yet it will obviously do so in the future. Perhaps the RAID constraints are similar in that they simply might not have added the functionality yet? Presumably the new file system will not be finalized for another year or so, so they could conceivably have a lot of time to add it in.

 

[KALLT]

Perhaps I spoke too soon then. I wonder why they added RAID Assistant in Sierra if they plan on completely deprecating it going forward and it has no future?

What makes you believe that Apple deprecates HFS+? You can probably still use it for RAID support.

 

[Brad9893]

What makes you believe that Apple deprecates HFS+? You can probably still use it for RAID support.

Well, it's Apple. They are not a company who provides a whole of backwards compatibility, nor do they care to do so, and they are aggressive about leaving technologies that they feel have outlived their usefulness in the past. Perhaps something as fundamental as a file system will be different though, and we will have HFS+ support for years to come, however I don't think Apple would want to put in the time to do this to support niche uses like RAID. That's just my take on it.

 

[KALLT]

Well, it's Apple. They are not a company who provides a whole of backwards compatibility, nor do they care to do so, and they are aggressive about leaving technologies that they feel have outlived their usefulness in the past. Perhaps something as fundamental as a file system will be different though, and we will have HFS+ support for years to come, however I don't think Apple would want to put in the time to do this to support niche uses like RAID. That's just my take on it.

Well, they did wait until Snow Leopard to phase out HFS write support and Sierra will now remove read support. They gave ample time. I guess that for external drives, they probably will maintain it for a while longer. However, the future path is definitely clearer, but that was already obvious when they removed RAID support from Disk Utility.

 

[bunnspecial]

Well, they did wait until Snow Leopard to phase out HFS write support and Sierra will now remove read support. They gave ample time. I guess that for external drives, they probably will maintain it for a while longer. However, the future path is definitely clearer, but that was already obvious when they removed RAID support from Disk Utility.

I'm having no issues reading HFS standard volumes in Sierra

 

[KALLT]

I'm having no issues reading HFS standard volumes in Sierra

Perhaps I misunderstood what Apple meant:

 

[bunnspecial]

Perhaps I misunderstood what Apple meant:
View attachment 636208

Interesting...perhaps that didn't make the cut, or else it will disappear in later Betas.

I did hop over to an OS 9 machine to initialize that flash drive, though(and apparently the date is set wrong on that system since Sierra thinks I formatted it tomorrow) and it worked just fine with doing nothing other than popping it in.

 

[Brad9893]

I'm having no issues reading HFS standard volumes in Sierra

View attachment 636207

Can I ask why someone might still choose to use HFS Standard today? HFS+ support goes all of the way back to Mac OS 8.1, so it's clearly not for a lack of support.

 

[grahamperrin]

HFS standard

@KALLT in this context I take 'no longer supported' to mean 'no support from Apple if you encounter a bug'. So for any such bug, developers should not use https://developer.apple.com/bug-reporting/ and other testers should not use Feedback Assistant.

Apple RAID

@Acidsplat thanks and for accessibility, here's the text from http://web.archive.org/web/20160613...alCharacteristics/GeneralCharacteristics.html –

Note: Apple File System does not directly implement software RAID, however APFS can be combined with an Apple RAID volume to support Striping (RAID 0), Mirroring (RAID 1) and Concatenation (JBOD). APFS can also be used with direct-attached hardware RAID solutions.​

The APFS topic

At https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/23019603

"… we typically use a single storage device on all of our products. …".​

 

[bunnspecial]

Can I ask why someone might still choose to use HFS Standard today? HFS+ support goes all of the way back to Mac OS 8.1, so it's clearly not for a lack of support.

Actually, support is exactly the reason. It's not a deal with USB disks since they weren't supported until 8.6(USB support in 8.1-8.5.5 is very basic), but it IS when you're getting files to or off a computer. I love ZIP disks since they will work with everything back to a Mac Plus to the most current Mac(I haven't tested one on 10.13 yet, but unless something dramatic has happened my USB drive should still work the same as it did in 10.12).

Of course, not being able to write in newer versions of OS X is a problem for this, but at least I can get files like documents OFF an older computer with the ability to read HFS. I've helped out a lot of co-workers with this. If I want to download and install files on an older computer, I do generally go to something running 10.4 or 10.5 and generally just download directly on those. These OSs are new enough that they're still useable on the internet(even more so when you get into things like G5 Quads and late Powerbooks) but will allow you to write directly to HFS standard.

Of course, the other option is to format your disk in FAT which is readable back to system 4 or so but if you're dealing with a floppy disks you need a Superdrive in your older computer in order to read a 1.44mb MS-DOS floppy(plus USB floppy drives won't work 400 or 800K Macintosh floppies). The MS-DOS option also requires VERY careful file handling-preferably with compressed files or images-to avoid corrupting the resource fork of a Macintosh file.

 

[Brad9893]

Actually, support is exactly the reason. It's not a deal with USB disks since they weren't supported until 8.6(USB support in 8.1-8.5.5 is very basic), but it IS when you're getting files to or off a computer. I love ZIP disks since they will work with everything back to a Mac Plus to the most current Mac(I haven't tested one on 10.13 yet, but unless something dramatic has happened my USB drive should still work the same as it did in 10.12).

Of course, not being able to write in newer versions of OS X is a problem for this, but at least I can get files like documents OFF an older computer with the ability to read HFS. I've helped out a lot of co-workers with this. If I want to download and install files on an older computer, I do generally go to something running 10.4 or 10.5 and generally just download directly on those. These OSs are new enough that they're still useable on the internet(even more so when you get into things like G5 Quads and late Powerbooks) but will allow you to write directly to HFS standard.

Of course, the other option is to format your disk in FAT which is readable back to system 4 or so but if you're dealing with a floppy disks you need a Superdrive in your older computer in order to read a 1.44mb MS-DOS floppy(plus USB floppy drives won't work 400 or 800K Macintosh floppies). The MS-DOS option also requires VERY careful file handling-preferably with compressed files or images-to avoid corrupting the resource fork of a Macintosh file.

I see. Thank you for the explanation.