MY CURRENT SYSTEM CONFIGURATION
  • Principal Hardware: M1 Mac mini, 16GB Memory, 500GB internal Storage, 6TB Thunderbolt 2 SoftRAID array
  • Principal Software: MacOS 11.4 beta 3, SoftRAID 6.0.4, Carbon Copy Cloner 5.1.27 (6196)


NOTABLE RECENT CHANGES/IMPROVEMENTS
  1. Creating Bootable External Drives Previously I had only been successful in creating a bootable external drive on Thunderbolt 3 SSDs directly connected to one of the two Thunderbolt 4 ports on the M1 Mac mini. I can now create a bootable external SSD connected to one of the ports on an OWC Thunderbolt 4 hub either by installing macOS 11.4 or cloning the internal SSD using CCC 5.1.27 (6196).👌 NOTE: This and other reports such as this and others indicate the two Thunderbolt 4 ports are not created equal and complex systems such as mine may be sensitive to the connection configuration of high speed external devices. ‼️ Although 40 Gbps Thunderbolt 3 cables should theoretically have the same capacity as Thunderbolt 4 cables, I wish I had more Thunderbolt 4 cables to experiment with 🤫 (Aw h3🏒🏒 its only $€¥£﷼)
  2. Carbon Copy Cloner 5.1.27 The process of creating a bootable clone of Big Sur on an M1 Mac is definitely cleaner and although I didn't time it, I would swear faster. 👍 Kernel extensions and volume security settings are not cloned 👎 Whether the security settings on a clone can be changed or not remains to be determined❓ Booting from the clone on an external drive requires unlocking the encrypted internal boot drive. 😳 It would appear this would render bootable external clones to be of little significant value other than for testing purposes. 🤔
  3. SoftRAID 6.0.4 Drivers install (albeit with some coaxing and lots of previous experience installing kernel extensions on my part)🤞 The SoftRAID App still does not "play nice" with APFS formatted arrays, there are workarounds but those should not be necessary 👎 (I believe this is in OWC's bailiwick). It still is not possible to encrypt SoftRAID arrays (I understand this is on Apple's to do list) 👎

If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein