And for more on SoftRAID, please visit How we measured performance: Only have two Thunderbolt Ports?Įven if your computer has only two Thunderbolt ports that share a single chip, you can still increase the security of your data by using two enclosures and a mirrored system (RAID 1 or RAID 1+0).įor more information on the different RAID configurations and what they can do for you, click here. Using two enclosures in this way is just not possible with hardware RAID. It’s like the difference between driving on a two-lane highway or a single lane road you can get more vehicles through per minute if there are two lanes, just as you can get more data through (essentially making data transfer faster) using two Thunderbolt ports (connected to different chips).

If you have created a volume that spans two enclosures, whose Thunderbolt cables are connected to different chips, you’ll be creating a volume that takes advantage of that doubled bandwidth-achieving faster speeds than are possible with a single enclosure over a single Thunderbolt cable. Note: If you only have two disks then creating a RAID 1 is a good way to use the inner part of your disks for a slower but safer solution. If a disk fails you may lose your scratch data, but the rest of your data will be secure. Because a RAID 0 volume gives you no protection against disk failure, you can use the slower sections of those same disks to create a RAID 1+0 volume (where your data is secured against disk failure) if you have a minimum of four disks.

With SoftRAID, you don’t have to use an entire disk for your RAID volume.įor example: to create the fastest scratch volume for video editing, create a RAID 0 volume using just the first 30 – 50% of each disk – giving you a volume which has the highest possible performance for any file on that volume. With SoftRAID, volumes can use different parts of the same disk, so the first 30-50% of each disk can be used to create a volume of one RAID level, and the remainder of each disk can be used to create a volume with a completely different RAID level – one where speed isn’t so important. With rotating disk drives, the first (or outer) 30-50% of a disk is the fastest part – often 1.5 times the speed at the end of the disk. Of course, if you’d prefer to have a setup that’s still fast but a little safer, check out other RAID options here.

If a disk fails in a stripe volume, you will lose all the files on that volume – although you do get peace of mind in knowing that SoftRAID Monitor can give you a warning if a disk is about to fail. Stripe (RAID 0) volumes will give you the fastest possible read and write performance but they won’t protect your data from disk failure.

Softraid vs apple raid