How to Create a Software RAID-0

Creating a software RAID-0 stripe in Disk Utility

Ouch! Apple removed all RAID from Disk Utility in OS X El Capitan—use SoftRAID.

Here, is created 2-drive RAID-0 stripe volume Master of capacity 8TB:

1. Click the RAID tab .
2. Enter a Raid Set Name and choose choose Striped RAID set.
   Leave the file system Format as Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
3. Drag the desired drive icons at left (“4TB HGST....”) into the area at right (“New member: ...”).
4. Click Create.

It is possible to make a RAID out of partitions on each drive. First partition each drive identically, then follow the steps above for each RAID set.

RAID-0 stripe with DiskUtility : select drives for the RAID

Confirm the change. This will erase everything on the drives chosen, so be sure the correct drives have been chosen (risks of making a mistake go up with 4/6/10 drives!). The result is one 8TB volume consisting of two 4TB hard drives.

RAID-0 stripe with DiskUtility : confirm the operation

When done, observe that the two hard drives are shown now with RAID Slice for “Master” under each, and that the RAID itself is listed as 8 TB Master, with volume Master under it. This confusing display has been present in Disk Utility for many years.

RAID-0 stripe with DiskUtility : status of the RAID

Creating a software RAID-0 stripe in SoftRAID

In this example, a 4-drive RAID-0 striped volume Master of capacity 4TB is created using four 4TB drives.

As shown, 1TB is used from each 4TB drive to create a 4TB volume; that leaves 3TB unused on each drive for other purposes (another RAID volume, or independent volumes, or simply unused).

1. Choose Volume type: RAID 0.
2. Enter a name in the New volume text box.
3. Select the drives to be used.
4. Click Create.

The result here is one 4TB volume consisting of four 4TB hard drives, using 1TB from each drive. Repeat the steps above to create additional volume(s), which could be any type of RAID.

Creating a RAID-0 stripe with SoftRAID 5