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SoftRAID 3 Manual Excerpts:
Using SoftRAID 3

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SoftRAID 3 consists of:

• The SoftRAID Application, used to create and manage SoftRAID volumes,
• The SoftRAID Monitor, used to alert you to changes in volume states when the Application is not running, and
• The SoftRAID Driver, which does the actual work of reading and writing data and handling error conditions.

The SoftRAID Application

The SoftRAID application window consists of a list of disks on the left, a list of volumes on the right, and connection pipes in the middle which appear when a single disk or volume is selected. This window is used to keep track of and maintain the volumes you create.

This window shows 6 disks attached to the Mac

The ATA boot disk initialized with the Apple driver and the disk that the machine boots from. SoftRAID volumes cannot be created on a boot disk,

• 2 ATA disks joined together in a Mirror volume called Customer Database,
• 2 FireWire disks initialized with the Apple driver, containing an Apple's RAID Stripe volume.
• 1 SCSI disk which has not been initialized with any driver.

The SoftRAID Monitor

The SoftRAID Monitor is a part of SoftRAID 3 which runs invisibly, reporting on errors and changes in volume states as the volumes are used. The SoftRAID application does not need to be launched for the Monitor to work. Through the Monitor Preferences in the application, you can select what types of alerts you will receive.

This is the type of alert that the Monitor can display

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The SoftRAID Driver

The SoftRAID driver is the real workhorse of SoftRAID 3 and is in charge of performing all read/write operations to SoftRAID volumes. It also keeps track of volumes and reports any changes in states to the Monitor and the Application. The SoftRAID driver must be installed on the Macintosh to recognize SoftRAID volumes. A user can access driver functions only through the Application window or the Monitor dialog boxes.

Creating and Using SoftRAID Volumes

SoftRAID volumes, like Apple Disk Utility volumes, are accessed using a driver installed in the System Folder of your startup volume. Apple Disk Utility initialized disks must be changed to SoftRAID initialized disks before the SoftRAID driver, which is automatically installed by the application in the System Folder, can recognize the SoftRAID volumes created on the disks.

Once a disk has been initialized with the SoftRAID driver, it will only appear on the desktop of machines with systems containing the SoftRAID driver.

Preparing Disks for SoftRAID Volumes

The first step in creating a SoftRAID volume is to initialize the disk(s) with the SoftRAID application. This can happen in two ways:

1. Initialize
Uninitialized disks, or Apple initialized disks with volumes and data that you don’t want to keep, can be initialized using the Initialize command under the Disk menu. Since this overwrites your access to any existing data on the disk, you will be asked for your system password.

To Initialize a disk:

1. Highlight a disk tile in the Application window (see note below about Startup disks)

2. Select the Initialize command under the Disk menu. You will be asked for your password.

3. A dialog will appear asking you to choose the format of the disk. Choosing Default tells SoftRAID to format the disks according to the type of processor in the Mac i.e., GPT for Intel or APM for PowerPC.

Choosing Custom allows you to choose which of these you need. All disks in a SoftRAID volume need to have the same format. See page 9 for more information.

4. Once SoftRAID has finished the Initialization procedure you will see that the disk icon has changed in the Application window as well as on the Desktop. The disk is now ready for the creation of SoftRAID volumes.

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