I now regret recommending CalDigit to my clients
I usually avoid making disparaging comments regarding products, but today, I discovered that Caldigit RAIDs are not supported on M1 Macs. I was working with a client recently with whom I had recommended a Caldigit T4 RAID Thunderbolt 3. The Caldigit T4 RAID TB3 we’ve been using as a backup on his 2017 iMac would not mount on his new M1 iMac. So, I contacted CalDigit tech support.
Here’s the condensed transcript from the online chat with CalDigit tech support:
Lightroom Guy (LrG) – Hello, I’m working with my client to get his Caldigit T4 RAID TB3 up and running on a 2021 M1 iMac. I’ve installed the Drive Utility. The Drive Utility appears to “see” the T4 but it doesn’t mount. We need your help getting the RAID up and Running. Thank you.
CalDigit Support (US) joined the chat
CalDigit – I regret to say that we do not currently have viable drivers that will allow use of the T4 RAID on any M1 Mac system. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this causes. In order to use the T4, you will need to connect it to an Intel-based Mac system.
CalDigit – In order to access the T4 on any level whatsoever, you will need to connect the T4 to an Intel-based Mac system
LrG – That doesn’t make any sense. What good does the T4 do backing up a computer I do not use. Since you cannot support the M1 Mac, will you refund my investment?
CalDigit – The hardware changes made with the M1 mac systems make driver/software changes extremely difficult, especially for legacy hardware. I regret that we are unable to do so, no
CalDigit – The M1 Mac systems do not support the T4’s drivers and attempts to circumvent the hurdles of the new M1 macs are proved unsuccessful. As of now, the only way to use the T4 RAID is on Intel-based Mac systems.
I can’t believe this!
(not part of this dialog)
LrG – So, we’re stuck with a doorstop from Caldigit.
CalDigit – The T4 RAID will still work on Intel-based Mac systems, but not on the newer M1 hardware
LrG – Had I known this I would never recommended this purchase. I have numerous clients who have the T4. You have just lost a customer.
And, you have made your problem my loss.
CalDigit – I understand your frustration in this matter and am sorry that we are not able to come to an immediate solution for you here today.
CalDigit – We’ll be sure to let you know of any changes regarding the T4 RAID and M1 Macs
–
M1 Macs came out in November 2020
So why hasn’t CalDigit been able to figure this in in the past 10 months? They claim that it’s too difficult to write the drivers for the Caldigit T4 RAID on an M1 Mac.
SoftRAID has figured this out with SoftRAID Pro and SoftRAID Lite (for Intel+M1 Macs). SoftRAID works with OWC RAIDs, Drobo, ORICO and many other third party RAIDs.
This really begs the question, what’s going on with Caldigit? All I know is that I can no longer recommend any of their products. And my apologies to anyone who may have purchased a Caldigit on my recommendation. How could anyone have known this would happen?
shared the same problems here. I am a video editor and I use T4R as my working disk array, which made me more angry hearing that they haven’t finished the M1 based drive in Aug.. I shall never purchased their prodcuts, including drives and hubs.
Yes. Totally disappointing and expensive that CalDigit cannot figure out M1 Macs while many other companies have this done.
Same problem, absolutely infuriating. They told me before I purchased the RAID that they were developing software for M1-based Macs, it’s new to me that they are now stating it’s “legacy” hardware and they won’t support it. Really crappy, agree that they have lost a customer.
Maybe a class action lawsuit is in order for this company. I’m looking into it.
class action lawsuit is great idea
I’m in the same boat. I’m hoping that because I formatted my arrays in JBOD that I can just remove the sleds and install the drives in an OWC enclosure, but that is probably too good to be true.
Good idea, Brian. Not sure if that will work, cross brands like that. Don’t know anyone who has done this, so please keep me posted.
Will do and fingers crossed D.A.
Hi D.A. So I ordered the OWC Thunderbay 8 enclosure and I think its going to work. Mind you I did not ever use the CalDigit as RAID but rather relied on JBOD ( My thinking is I would rather trade the speed of RAID 0 or the convenience of an automated RAID 1,2,3 what-have-you for simplicity of JBOD, for just these sorts of scenarios). Anyhow I removed my CalDigit drive and installed it into the OWC sled and viola, the drive mounts and I do not need to migrate anything. If I have trouble loading all 8 bays I’ll… Read more »
Brilliant results, my friend! Many thanks for sharing your solution.
Hi Brian,
Great idea! Just curious if this has still been working for? I originally set mine up as Raid 0 and backed it up to the CalDig AV Pro 2. Since I’m backed up, I guess I could convert to JBOD. Thank you!
Yes, still working!
I found your website after contacting CalDigit about the same problem. None of this makes any sense; the people who bought T4s have to be CalDigits best customers from a transaction price standpoint. Of all customers, why burn us?
It’s a real shame because I quite like the T4 and I’ve recommended CalDigit to others.
Agreed, this is a bad business move by CalDigit.
Just got this message from Caldigit support 😡 : Hello Jasper, Thank you for contacting us. We do apologise you’re experiencing issues. We have contacted our advanced technical team who write all of our firmware, software and drivers to see if there were any updates on the ETA as of when the raid utility will be updated and unfortunately, they have told us they do not know when or if this will be updated for the M1 computers. We understand this is not what you want to hear but we do not have any additional information other than that. Regards,… Read more »
Yes, Jesper. Caldigit should give their RAID owners a refund. But it appears they no respect and no sense of responsibility to their customers. Criminal, if you ask me.
D.A.
Totally agree. !!!!! At least they could have announced it before the launch of the new 16-MacBook Pro which I bought. I have two T4 Raids 16gb each containing a lot of footage I use daily for customers. The Raids are only two years old. Fortunately I still have my old Intel based iMac. But it’s slow. It can’t be that hard to develop some drivers for Silicon Macs. Other companies can !!!!
Thanks for the post.
So angry at CalDigit right now! Can’t believe that they don’t support Apple Silicon. Spent thousands of dollars on my drives. Will never be purchasing anything from them again.
Understood @MoDee227. It is infuriating that CalDigit has no remorse regarding this issue. It shows a greediness and lack of respect for their customers.
TLDR Summary: you can’t use a Caldigit T4 even as JBOD on either an M1 Mac or an Intel Mac running MacOS Monterey. I’ve been using the CalDigit T4 for image storage and like others am impacted by the this. I recently got an M1 Mac, and from your blog I knew that the CalDigit created RAID Volumes would not be supported. However, as I originally configured the RAID volumes on the T4 using SoftRaid (I did not use CalDigit’s RAID utility) I thought that it would still work as SoftRaid runs on M1 Macs. However, what I’m experiencing is… Read more »
My Caldigit 2019 JBODs HDs power up fine in a OWC enclosure running Catalina just FYI. I am about to erase the soft raid on my latest OWC 48TB enclosure now.
I own a Caldigit T3 (Thunderbolt 2) in RAID 0, which I have been using on both my M1 Max Mac Studio as well as my M1 Pro MBP without any issues. It seems strange that the T4 would not work, but the even older T3 would? Or is it due simply to the Thunderbolt 2 implementation of the T3?
Hello Fabian. I cannot answer that question, but it does seem as if the TB2 somehow bypasses the TB3 limitations.
How are you connecting it? I have not been able to get my T3 to read by my Monterey 2019 MacBook Pro or my studio-both connected through thunderbolt (usb-c type connector) adapter to thunderbolt 2. Right now my only thought is to use the drives with the AV Pro 2-which isn’t ideal at all (JBOD).
Hi, sorry, I seem to have posted this message incorrectly the first time. Trying again. I recently purchased a mac Studio M1 computer. Come to find that the CALDIGIT T4-TB3 RAID drive I purchased in November of 2020 is no longer supported by CALDIGIT, and they have no intention of providing drivers for the M1 chipset. Their last macOS Utility software update was in 10/2019. Clearly, when they sold me the drive they already knew it was a legacy piece of hardware. I am really pi$$ed at them for this. Have you had any positive results in dealing with them?… Read more »
No results with Caldigit. It’s the first time in decades I’ve run into this kind of unprofessional behavior.
This is unacceptable from Caldigit. We are not talking about a $200 product! Not even a $500 product. I paid $1600 for mine!!! There must be something that can be done. If not, we all need to boycott this product. I bought mine 2 years ago. I was expecting this product to last a good while, that is why I invested more money!! This is very frustrating!! A class action lawsuit would be a good avenue to get them to fix the problem. They should offer some sort of refund incentive. At least half the cost would show that they… Read more »
Agreed, Caldigit should have done something about this one way or another a long time ago. However, Caldigit has refused to offer any kind of compensation or software patch to address this issue as far as I know. Since September 2021, I stopped recommending anything sold by Caldigit, period.
What are folks recommending as I have to move on as I’m keeping my mac studio, I need something that runs cool [unlike the SanDisk G-Drives that run too hot]. Is this a good option? – https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/T4MS6H14N00/
Hi Will, Just for the record, SanDisk G-Drives are spindle drives, much slower than SSDs or NVMe M.2 SSDs. So I only recommend those for backing up, not active file storage. The OWC Mini Stax you are looking at has a spindle drive inside, a 14.0TB Toshiba MG08ACA Series 7,200RPM Enterprise HDD. A good drive. Okay for Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner, but not for a new Mac Studio. Consider an SSD or NVMe M.2 SSD instead.
Thanks for sharing your expertise.