How to Install High Sierra onto a SoftRAID Volume

SoftRAID
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This post will help users who startup from a SoftRAID volume to upgrade to High Sierra

Issues:
• High Sierra's installer will not directly install onto an Apple RAID volume
• High Sierra's installer will not directly install onto a SoftRAID volume
• High Sierra's installer can trigger a kernel panic on SoftRAID RAID 4/5 volumes

We are actively working with Apple engineering to resolve these issues.

The essential steps are these:
• Clone your existing volume to a non RAID Apple volume
• Upgrade to High Sierra onto that volume
• Clone your new updated system back to your SoftRAID volume.

Required tools:
• SoftRAID 5.6.3
• Volume cloning software, i.e, SuperDuper, Carbon Copy Cloner, Chronosync etc.

IMPORTANT: If you have a RAID 4 or 5 volume, you will need to disconnect those disks before running the High Sierra installer!

Step by Step instructions

Connect an external disk to your computer, large enough to contain your boot volume. (If your startup volume has too much data for a single disk to hold, you can copy large files off line, so your startup volume is a manageable size.) Run Disk Utility and follow these Disk Utility steps: Select the external disk in the left column and "Erase." Select: • Format: OS X Extended (journaled) • Scheme: GUID Partition map Quit Disk Utility. Now restart your computer, making sure no applications are running. Run your cloning application and clone your system to the external disk. Go to System Preferences → 'Startup Disk' and select your new cloned volume to be the startup disk IMPORTANT: If you have a SoftRAID RAID 4 or RAID 5 volume, disconnect all disks associated with it before proceeding. Run the High Sierra installer and upgrade your system to High Sierra. Run SoftRAID 5.6.3 and update the driver in your new system volume. Note: it is now safe to reconnect your RAID 4/5 disks! Run your cloning application and clone your system from the external disk back to your SoftRAID volume. Run SoftRAID 5.6.3 again. Select the SoftRAID volume tile and "rebuild boot cache". Go to System Preferences → 'Startup Disk' and select your newly cloned SoftRAID volume (on your system disk(s)) Restart your computer. It should now start up using your SoftRAID volume.

Let us know if we can make this page better, we will keep it updated.

Final Note: Best practice is to startup from a different volume when cloning your startup volume. Be aware, however, that this would add several more steps to this process. But by restarting before cloning your system, you are minimizing any possible issues from cloning a "live" system.

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