Apple docs do not mention RAID 5, just 0, 1 and JBOD. However other 3rd party docs mention 10 and you have it working so it must be 0, 1. 10 and JBOD. I agree subscriptions are not my thing, especially considering that when I bought the enclosure there was no mention of a subscription in order to keep it going.
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SoftRAID will now charge?
- Thread starter Johnny Jackhammer
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Account was created 1 hour ago to respond to this thread, hmmm...Heya! There are some big changes coming to SoftRAID licensing later this month that I think you will like/appreciate. I'd recommend to just wait a few more weeks for the announcement(s)
You have already lost the trust of many, and now you expect people to wait on your command with no useful information on these "changes". That's a lot.
I think most NAS come with the software built in and I assume the software is kept up to date without charge. The SoftRAID niche market was selling RAID 5 capability to users. That's the one thing they have, and to me not worth the fee when I can move to RAID 10 natively. The truth is they are maintaining their interface so it's compatible with the latest OS. AFAIK the underlying code that makes RAID work is not being updated, ever. Keeping an interface compatible with the OS is not worth that much cash. Since it's not open source we have no idea what changes they are making or if they are making any at all. They expect us to just blindly trust them and pay a fee too.
Heya! There are some big changes coming to SoftRAID licensing later this month that I think you will like/appreciate. I'd recommend to just wait a few more weeks for the announcement(s)
No matter what discount 2% off or 3% if you have 2 OWC products or whatever generous gift that is offered to people who originally bought into the company and invested in - charging customers a fee they are locked into after buying your hardware they rely on is something people are going to not going to take well.
I bought an OWC product and was loyal enough to buy another hardware unit, only to find now I'm effecting 'renting' both hardware and software because I'm hostage to the price - I can't update my system OS without fear of something breaking although I have to update my Os for new features and other apps, so it's strong-arming people into paying for sofraid licensing.
Such a shame - i'm going to jump ship to another company soon as I can. You couldn't have made a worse move than the bad reputation from this licensing fee fiasco. It's like what happened to 1Password.
Fully agree that those that bought in the past and still using the software/hardware should be grandfathered in and not subject to the subscription model. Really bad faith action on OWC's part.
It is when you need high capacity drives. Quite a significant factor: Ironwolf Pro 24 TB $549, IWP 20 TB $349, IWP 16 TB $269
They lost my sale before I bought any, went for another solution. Shame as the price points were attractive & seemed the natural successor upgrading the Drobos.
I think a response is better than no response, so I created an account to chime in. Like most companies, there is a set date when an announcement will be made. My goal was to simply just state that some big (hopefully positive) changes to the licensing are coming this month and it might be a good idea to wait a few weeks before making any decisions.
I can't state what these changes are ahead of the announcement.
A lot of the changes will address these points you make. If I could go into more details, I would.
I used SoftRaid before it was purchased by OWC. At that time it was just a front end to Apple's raid according to the original developer. I would guess that is still accurate.
As a developer I know that Apple makes it hard to keep software working as each new release has tons of bugs and API changes. Apple does a very poor job of protecting the operation of old code. Here, old code, means last year's.
The problem with the current SoftRaid subscription model, is that OWC cannot expect a maintenance product like SoftRaid to make the company profitable. I moved away from RAID in all forms because it is too complicated and too easily fails for small setups. By small I mean 3 or 4 drives. In addition, I have had terrible problems with Time Machine backups on virtual images. Time Machine just does not work for this type of data and therefore I don't trust it for any data.
My solution is to use a reliable backup utility and backup to multiple drives, in multiple enclosures, at different times. Storage costs have gotten low enough that, outside of data center needs, RAID is not needed.
Will hold on to see what these changes are - if it involves a subscription based system, or paying for the software, then I would most likely sell my 3 ThunderBlade drives.
Invested a lot of money into these drives, so there's no way I'd be prepared to continue to pay in order to fully utilise all features that were promised upon purchase.
Great if that works for you. I prefer faster RAID 1+0 data transfers over 10Gbe, the redundancy of RAID 1+0, and having all my stuff accessible without having to swap drives. Whichever way you do it there really is no getting around having multiple drives if you want to protect your data. Using appleRAID with DiskUtility has been working well so far. I would prefer a hardware RAID or NAS and will move to that eventually.
The only point I'm making is if you are charging, then it's a fail.... so how will you address that? No more charging?
If it's anything else then it's just a big fat fail - take that message to the top.
I doubt I'm getting money back on the rent I've already paid, which I could have bought a whole physical drive with.
Even if you stop charging, I've paid up for nothing, and it makes customers feel like I feel like a dirty floor...
This isn't personal - it's just another way to hostage customers that is frustrating and whoever made the decision to charge people needs to smell the coffee..(and then be taxed on smelling it).
I am not sure if anyone has noticed but OWC now have a new release of Softraid, V8. They also introduced a new licensing scheme. There is a free version of Softraid that allows you to monitor and replace a drive on an existing Raid array but not create a new RAID array. They get around first time time startups by giving a free 3 year license ( I think it is) for the Pro version with new enclosures. Thereafter you need to pay a yearly subscription to maintain the Pro version or revert to the free version which can only maintain and monitor an existing array. This seems fair enough as it allows you to maintain your RAID array at no cost e.g replace a defective drive. This is a lot better than it was before. However if you need to build a completely new array in an existing enclosure it looks as if you will have to stump up for a Pro license. Not so good. It seems as if it is a one shot deal unless you pay for a subscription. Still not what we thought we had signed up for when we bought the enclosure.
I guess this gets round all the disgruntled customers with previous units who just want to maintain their systems. However, it still means if you want to wipe and create an array, or even change RAID levels, you need to pay for the pro license - at least to create the array, before dropping down to the free license?
That is what I am guessing, even if you are creating the same type, but I don’t know. Might try and get a copy of the free one to see what it can do.
Don’t tell the printer industry! The OWC precedent will make them billions charging for their printer software updates as well as the ink. Why not - there is nothing the consumer can do about it.
I am still using the built in Disk Utility appleRAID without issue. Every year that it continues to work without issue saves me $150. I am curious... over the last year how many critical updates have they given users for this fee they demand?
It's starting to look like Mark James cut a pretty good deal with OWC for the ownership of SoftRAID and his services. When was that? When did OWC start needing more money to cover their agreement?
I don't have a Linked In account but this is the first sentence:
"SOFTRAID, LLC. 1998 - Dec 2014 16 years. Mill Valley CA. SoftRAID was purchased by OWC Holdings in January 2015. SoftRAID was founded in 1998, purchasing the technology from EMC, after EMC ..."
But James still answers requests on issues at the softRAID forum. That costs OWC something. And I am sure he is still working on "their" software too. That is why you are paying OWC. Fine, but the question is how much profit is OWC making off this arrangement. Fee to buy softRAID in 2015, Mark James' salary and $? for OWC = what you're paying for. How many units have been sold over the last 15 years... thousands, tens of thousands? Multiply by $150 and you get the number. Just a way to bend people over a barrel and extract cash from people who owned enclosures before that deal was ever cut. And what about the profit in the units themselves. Those don't cost OWC $400 to produce. Part of the original equation on that price was maybe James' cut?
I am still using the built in Disk Utility appleRAID without issue. Every year that it continues to work without issue saves me $150. I am curious... over the last year how many critical updates have they given users for this fee they demand?
It's starting to look like Mark James cut a pretty good deal with OWC for the ownership of SoftRAID and his services. When was that? When did OWC start needing more money to cover their agreement?
I don't have a Linked In account but this is the first sentence:
"SOFTRAID, LLC. 1998 - Dec 2014 16 years. Mill Valley CA. SoftRAID was purchased by OWC Holdings in January 2015. SoftRAID was founded in 1998, purchasing the technology from EMC, after EMC ..."
But James still answers requests on issues at the softRAID forum. That costs OWC something. And I am sure he is still working on "their" software too. That is why you are paying OWC. Fine, but the question is how much profit is OWC making off this arrangement. Fee to buy softRAID in 2015, Mark James' salary and $? for OWC = what you're paying for. How many units have been sold over the last 15 years... thousands, tens of thousands? Multiply by $150 and you get the number. Just a way to bend people over a barrel and extract cash from people who owned enclosures before that deal was ever cut. And what about the profit in the units themselves. Those don't cost OWC $400 to produce. Part of the original equation on that price was maybe James' cut?
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