If there’s a problem with any of your disks or volumes, SoftRAID Monitor alerts you immediately by:
The SoftRAID Monitor uses SMART to watch the internal error counters for each disk. If these error counters indicate that a disk is more likely to fail, the SoftRAID Monitor will change the color of the indicator in the menu bar and put up a dialog to get your attention.
While testing disks in the SoftRAID Lab, we find that the SoftRAID Monitor correctly predicts that a disk will fail more than 50% of the time. The warning usually comes 1-4 weeks before the disk fails completely.
The SoftRAID Monitor watches the flash memory in each SSD (Solid State Disk).2,3 Each block in a flash memory chip can only be written 1,000 – 10,000 times before it is worn out. The SoftRAID Monitor checks each SSD every 24 hours to see if its flash memory is worn out.
When an SSD has used up 90% of the life of its flash memory, the SoftRAID Monitor will start warning you every 24 hours. When it has used up 99% of the life, the SoftRAID Monitor tells you to replace the SSD immediately.
Manufacturers don’t test their disks, so your new disk could be faulty. SoftRAID’s Certify lets you know for sure.
When you buy a disk, how do you know if it’s faulty or not?
You’d think that disk manufacturers would test every sector on a disk before they shipped it, but unfortunately, they don’t. It would take them too long. With SoftRAID, you can perform the testing that disk manufacturers can’t afford to do.
SoftRAID’s certify feature can tell you if you have a faulty disk before you put precious data on it. When you certify a disk with SoftRAID, you read and write to every sector of the disk, more than once.
A SoftRAID disk tile being Certified
To Certify, SoftRAID first writes a random pattern out to every sector on the disk. Then it reads and verifies the pattern to make sure every sector on the disk is reliable. After that it fills your disk with zeros, so that there is no data on it at all.
You can have SoftRAID do up to 8 Certify passes through your disk, if you want to be absolutely certain it’s completely reliable—say if you are storing critical data on it.
Although you can get by with less, we recommend at least 3 Certify passes.
Without certifying, your data is at risk
Certifying a large disk with SoftRAID can take a long time—often a day or two (or more)—but it’s worth it!
If you don’t take the time to certify a disk, you run the risk of losing all the data you put on it. After you have certified a disk, you know that it can safely and reliably store your files.
Certify more than one disk at a time
You can certify many disks at once. On Thunderbolt buses, certifying 4 – 8 disks at once takes only slightly longer than certifying a single disk.
Certify your SSDs as well as your HDDs
SoftRAID doesn’t just certify rotating drives. You can use SoftRAID’s certify feature to test new SD memory cards before you use them in your digital camera, video recorder etc. Whether it’s an SD, SDHC, or SDXC card, SoftRAID will let you know if your new card has any bad sectors on it that could put your data at risk. Remember to use at least 2 certify passes; 3 is even better.
Use certify to “revitalize” your SD cards
It’s a good idea to regularly “revitalize” or “recondition” your SD memory cards, and SoftRAID’s certify can help you do that.
SSDs that don’t use TRIM (such as all USB flash media) get slower the more they are used, because instead of actually erasing old data, flash just labels those sectors as “clean”. When you need to write to these previously used sections, data has to be erased first, slowing the process down. In addition, the more you write to an SD, the harder it is to find ‘clean’ areas to write to.
Certifying your SD card will fill the memory with zeros, essentially ‘erasing’ all the data, and making it behave like new. However, always remember that certifying will erase all the data from your drive, so be sure to back up your data first. (It’s not possible to restore data from a card that’s been certified as the data has been overwritten with zeros.)
How to test your disk without destroying the data on it
If you want to test a disk without destroying the volumes on it, you can use SoftRAID to verify the disk. When you verify a disk, SoftRAID will read every sector on the disk to ensure that it can be read without errors.
Safely test your volume at any time!
If you’re ever worried about the integrity of your SoftRAID volume, you can Validate it at any time. Validation ensures all the data on the volume is still readable.
During validation, SoftRAID reads every block on the volume—making sure it can be read without errors. If there is an error, the SoftRAID Monitor will warn you and will add an entry to the SoftRAID log file. The validation process will also run extra checks depending on the type of volume you have (see RAID level validation details below).
The actual validating of the volume is done by the SoftRAID driver, so you can start the validation process, quit the SoftRAID application and the validation process will keep going. You can continue to use your volume normally while the driver is validating it. You can even validate your startup volume.
While it’s validating a volume, the driver watches to see if you’re using the volume. If the driver sees that you have started to read or write files on the volume, validation briefly pauses so that your work isn’t interrupted. Whenever you’re not accessing files, validating is resumed.
When you validate a volume, the following happens:
Validating a volume is not required, but it’s a good safety measure. You can think of it like checking the pressure on your spare tire; if you get a flat you have the peace of mind that your spare is ready to go. Validation gives you the peace of mind that if any problem occurs, all the parity and mirror data is correct and up-to-date.
When SoftRAID validates a mirror or RAID 1+0 volume, it reads from each disk in a mirror set and compares the data. If the data from all the disks in a mirror (RAID 1) or mirror set (RAID 1+0) do not match, SoftRAID updates the disks so they are all identical to their mirrored twin.
When SoftRAID validates a RAID 4 or RAID 5 volume, it reads the data for each block and recalculates the parity information. It then compares the recalculated parity information with the parity information stored on the disks. If the parity information on the disks is incorrect, SoftRAID updates the disks with the correct parity information.
Validating a volume is not required, but it’s a good safety measure. You can think of it like checking the pressure on your spare tire; if you get a flat you have the peace of mind that your spare is ready to go. Validation gives you peace of mind that if any problem occurs, all the parity and mirror data is correct and up-to-date.
The SoftRAID application performs a SMART1 test on every disk each time you run it.2 In addition, the SoftRAID Monitor runs a SMART test on every disk each time you start up your Mac. It also runs the SMART test every 24 hours while your Mac is running.
During a SMART test, the disk tests itself to make sure it is operating correctly. If the disk determines that some part of the mechanical mechanism or electronics is not working correctly, it will fail the SMART test. Disks which fail the SMART test should be replaced immediately.
* RAID 4/5/1+0 (10) volumes are not yet supported in SoftRAID for Windows.
1. SMART is a monitoring system in disk drives that SoftRAID’s Monitor uses to assess drive reliability and anticipate drive failures.
2. These features require disks that support SMART. They are not available on disks connected via USB or FireWire and may not be available if a disk is connected via some third-party interface cards.
