LaCie 6Big - M1 Mac Mini Driver

I'm having the exact same issue with a new 6Big. I can get the unit to work over USB 3.1, but not Thunderbolt 3. It appears to me that Big Sur is refusing to allow the driver to be installed, but in either case the 6Big DOES NOT WORK over Thunderbolt 3. The Mac Mini M1 doesn't even see it.

Lacie's support is atrocious, I can't get ahold of anyone or get them to respond to emails. I think I'll return it.

Hi guys, i'm having also the exact same issue with a new 6Big. I can install the Lacie Raid App but not the KEXT. Any workaround already?

LaCie support was zero help. There was effectively no trouble shooting whatsoever. They had me run a firmware update (it was already updated to the latest version), then check Privacy&Security to see if OS11 was preventing anything from running (when I first installed LaCie RAID Manager I got a warning saying OS11 blocked something from running, but there is now no mention of this in system preferences), then try a different Thunderbolt 3 cable.

That was it. After that, LaCie said it should work, couldn't understand why it wasn't working, and that since I just purchased the unit I should return it.

Somebody has to have figured this out by now, right? Please help!

I think I found what's going on. Under "Disabled Software", this is what appears. It looks like OS11 is preventing this from running. I've been on the phone with Apple support and they are blaming LaCie (which might be justified).

Is there any way to allow this software to run, and see if it resolves the issue, or figure out why it was blocked?

7NPX47N25H - com.lacie.driver.mvumi:
Version: 1.3.21
Reason: No User Consent
Date Disabled: Unknown

If you show the package contents of LaCie RAID Manager in your applications directory and manually run the bash script to install the driver (InstallDriver.sh) in Terminal you'll likely get a message saying it's only x86 compatible. At least, that's the case with my big 5 bay LaCie. After 3.5 hours on the phone with support this is being blamed on Marvell and LaCie says they can't support it and don't know that Marvell will choose to on 'legacy' devices like this. I got a message (similar to the usual kext security messages) on install informing me of the incompatibility (when using the regular install GUI). It's fairly easy to miss and you'll only get it on the first install. Did you see anything like that?

I'm not sure if the root cause is the same on your TB3 6-bay but this is the dead end I hit on my TB2 LaCie. If they're both using the Marvell controller it seems likely.

Had same problem with M1 Mac mini. Apple support was very helpful taking me through two levels of support. Got escalated to engineers that identified the problem as a change in how drivers are installed. Supposedly the information was provided to LacIe well ahead of time to prepare, they did not prepare.
Reached out to LaCie, after several techs having no clue, I got a written response back acknowledging the problem and stating that they were working on it. I sent a follow up complaint as their website under support still was not acknowledging the problem a month into it and finally they posted its as a known problem a couple of weeks back.
So wait and see, but it is a problem with the Marvel drivers and there is no work around until re-written as I was told.

LaCie/seagate support has been useless. I bought an M1 mini to use with my 6big RAID and nobody seems to know anything as to how to fix it. People seem to think that it’s 32.

there are other drivers than Marvell that should support 64 byte, are there not? LaCie needs to get their act together and remedy this. It’s not like Apple didn’t provide the tools prior to the rollout of the M1 chip for them to know there’d be a problem.

Has anyone come up with a solution or have any information on when/if a fix might be available? Are there any workarounds?

Lacies customer support is horrible. I bought the 6Big with the new M1. Now I consider returning it... Have anyone received any info from Lacie at all?

I have been trying to solve my issue with Lacie 5BIG TB2 and Big Sur on iMac for 2 months. When accessing the Lacie Raid Manager, I would get the message that a driver needs to be installed. When I manually ran the install script, I noticed that I was getting an error when trying to load the driver. I noticed some references to old kext.

I use the System Report to look at all non Apple extensions and see when they were installed, if they were loadable and x64.

I opened a terminal and

• sudo su

• cd /Library/Extensions

• deleted all old extensions that I no longer needs such as Blackberry, Epson and Logitech. (rm -rf {name of the directory you want to delete}

I then received a notification from Security and Privacy about something was updated (don't remember the exact message) and needed to restart my iMac. I restarted my iMac and to my surprise my Lacie 5BIG TB2 came back online :-)

Bottom line for me, there was an extension that prevented others (like the Lacie one) to get loaded. Cleaning up these old extensions did the trick. Hope it can help some of you address that issue.

In reply to Clouzeau, this gives me hope of being able to use my new Mac Mini M1 with my 5Big TB2 on Big Sur. I am not a developer, I am a photographer with heaps of media assets on the 5Big that I cannot access at the moment.

I have reached out to LaCie help desk by email but their help has been ultra basic and nothing that I haven't found myself by searching. They now say that the 5Big TB2 is not compatible with the M1, but your post gives me hope.

Your instructions have given me a roadblock though. I open Terminal, type in sudo su and then it prompts me for a password. I type in my Apple password but it doesn't let me in. Then I searched further and found I could change my password which I did.



Then I typed cd /Library/Extensions but then I got this message :  

No such file or directory
sh-3.2

Is there something else I can try?

sorry I'm not sure why my last line was in a headline form, I can't seem to change it.

Bluedisk, unfortunately my work around only works for older Mac that had a number of OS major upgrades. It will not work for a brand new machine or brand new clean installation. The fact that you cannot access the Extensions directory means that you have not installed any non-apple extensions. My work around demonstrated that 5BIG works on Big Sur with an intel chip. Your Mac mini is based on the M1 chip and will need a different driver.

As of March 1, 2021, LaCie's 2big, 6big, and 12big Thunderbolt 3 products, as well as their 5big and 10big Thunderbolt 2 products, are not compatible with Apple Silicon (M1) Macs. Their website states that "LaCie is working to address compatibility issues."

April 8 - 2021. 5 few days ago I received a notice that LaCie had issued an update to the LaCie RAID manger that would work under Big Sur 11.2.3. Today, April 8th, I set aside the afternoon to download and install the RAID driver and physically move my 5BIG from my Intel Mac Pro 6,1 (2013) Thunderbolt-2 to my Mac Mini M1 (16GB ram/2TB storage). So this is LaCie Raid Manager 2.9.3.207. This time the install under Big Sur went fine - I had to approve the software's source with Privacy as expected and this time it went okay. The drive was recognized and I could read and write to it. However, it's performance is seriously impacted. On my Intel MacPro (TrashCan 6,1 Thunderbolt 2) I get at least, 400/400 MB/sec by any measure (transfer a really big video file and stopwatch it, Blackmagic, etc) - but on moving the drive to the M1 my speeds are roughly write 55MB/sec; read 270 MB/sec...there is some variability but this is the essence of it - not much better than a USB2 drive and on par with a FW 800.

So this is a serious problem. This drive, while readable, is useless for ay serious photographic/video work.
I spent some hours on the phone with tech support today and they do not have an answer for this. I swapped every TB2 cable and Apple adapter I have* - so it's not a cable or adapter issue. It's a driver issue - entangled with caches/buffers/optimization and all that.

• I have 3 Apple TB 2<-->3 dongles I have 2M and half-metre cables from different manufacturers - I counter-swapped, and all these work fine on the TrashCan - and when connected on the clearest/simplest path on the M1 Mac - much less performance.

Two questions

what numbers are you seeing*
How do we mount a claim on this.

• the reason I am asking this is if your 5Big (whatever) is performing differently than mine - I have done 2 failed drive swaps over the years and although I have replaced with IronWolf, maybe I have introduced something incompatible or less optimized. Nonetheless, the LaCie Techs cannot discern this and the drive currently does do 400+/400+ on the Intel and 55/270 on the M1.

I do not relish dumping this drive system - but it is useless on the new future of Macs. The LaCie tech sort-of admitted to this but has no solution and so we must apply some pressure.

Nest Steps. BTW - I am sure this applies to 6Big and 12Big as well....so this is not a small community that has had their hardware back-watered very prematurely.

jc - April 8-2021

Same problem here. M1 Mini, 16GB, Big Sur 11.2.3, LaCie 6Big with 20 TB Raid 5 connected via TB3.
A few days ago I installed the new driver and Raidmanager 2.9.3.207, at least the raid was accessible via TB3

• write: around 31 MB/s

• read: around 460 MB/s

Today, April 11, it seems there was an update for the kernel driver but no speed changes.

There is another thread, below, discussing this topic. We are trying to get as many people affected to reply/post there, instead, so we may begin to build a compelling case to LaCie to acknowledge and address this issue.

Please check out....

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252212343?login=true&page=2

jc

July 25 - 2021. I have restored the speed on my 20TB 5BIG by converting the whole box to OWC SoftRaid PRO. After LaCie fixed the driver and allowed the drive to mount, I was getting speeds in the order of 49 MB/sec write and 225 MB/sec read ..... after converting to SoftRaid, with a the RAID loaded to about 75% of its capacity I am getting speeds in the 300 / 500 range.

Reply if you want details.

jc

I have two G Tech drives a Studio R and Studio XL both of which have run fine for years they are great and stable as and run on an older I Mac and I Mac Pro but friends have and still run fine on my 2015 Mac Book. I just proudly brought the new I Mac (brought last week, took seven weeks to get) spec'ed with more ram to then run Da Vinci Resolve 17 on and the two drives don't mount -- I am told they won't as the M1 chip is too modern and its not a hardware fault of the Mac but my drives -- I have spent about 8k on these drives and used them for some time in my work as an editor they are great drives and I am gutted that a brand new I Mac and now my wives new Mac book Air also M1 (brought today)won't see these drive. Strange thing is a 2014 G Tech Studio drive (6 TB) works fine so how come these two don't?????? Its thousands of dollars wasted when you think you are buying the best out. I don't know what to do as i need these drives for work and the content on them for work and they are great drives but i cant see them. NO where does it say from Apple that drives won't work with an M1 Mac not anywhere and its gutting to have invested in two you devices from the the I mac and Air and if I could return all my products I just about would as this is thousands of dollars of equipment that really doesn't do the job. Apple support say its not their fault that other companies don't keep up with them Does anyone have any ideas on this or any drivers from G tech???

Hi, All.

I have the same problem.

Macbook pro 13" M1 6Big Thunderbolt 3 connection

Write/ 40 Read/ 340

Same problem here. 50 MB/s wite, about 250 MB/s read. Brandnew Macbook Air M1. Lacie 6big 48TB.

This absolutely breaks my workflow. Honestly: Even if they fix it, I am not going to touch a Lacie product ever again. Its been a year since the release of M1. They should at least openly communicate incompatibility and admit their unwillingness to provide a solution.

Since I need to access all my video and photo files on a fast drive, I'll probably switch over my hard drives from the Lacie device into another enclosure. Bye bye Lacie.

hi peeps. Dunno if this might help. Found a solution that seems to work. I had as well 43MB-430MB W/R, Lacie Big 6 84TB, MacBook Pro 13" M1. just did this and jumped to 1000MB/s for both R/W

• Apple disc utility - erase
• SoftRaid 6.2.1 Initialize
• SoftRAid New Volume RAID 0

=> LaCie RAID Manager keeps recognizing the Big 6 as Raid 5 and does not appear to have issues with the new system as if nothing happened. If true or not this I don't know yet. the speed jumped up to 1000, see attachment. it's not the 1400/MB/s they declared but temporarily better. is it safe ? I have no clue

I just forwarded the same info to Lacie's support as the person I got in touch with seemed to not know as well.

asked/suggested that Lacie might need to check with SoftRaid Driver and possibly fix. suggested warranty should be be extended and not start until they resolve problem. 43MB/s is not acceptable for a professional external drive + should offer option of refund if not resolved within 60 days + keep all clients with this issue informed and demonstrate support.

Hi, Same problem here, I have a new apple M1 max and my Lacie 6big 60to in Raid 5 is really slow. 45 mb/s in write speed and 350 mb/s for the read speed with thunderbolt 3 of course. I've tried with usb cable instead of thunderbolt but still the same. Before I had an Imac without apple silicon and my 6 big was working as expected. I can see by this forum that this problem have been here for more than a year now. It's crazy that lacie didn't manage to find a solution for their product to work correctly with apple silicon.

I'm having the same problem now. I'm currently using a MacBook Pro (16 inch, 2021) Apple M1 Max 64 GB computer with macOS Monterey 12.2.1 system.  My LaCie 6big Thunderbolt 3 ( 6x4 20 TB ) RAID System gives the following values with Thunderbolt 3 cable.

I am having the same issue, Blackmagic 35 WRITE; 300 READ. 6BIG, 32 TB. Raid6, LaCieRaidManager 2.9.3.225 (current version), all firmwares up to date. The 2Big 32 TB RAID0 is about 300/300.

I thought the 6Big was hardware RAID, why does it have such troubles? Seagate, please fix this – basically this is hyper expensive Hardware not working anymore due to software problems.

I've been trying out my Lacie 6big 40Tb on a new M1 Mac Mini at 12.2.1. Experiencing same problem with read and write speeds. Getting about 40 WRITE, 400 READ. Latest version of LacieRaidManager and all firmware up to date.