Internal drive is not mounting.

That SoftRaid SMART output is awful. If you want to get all of the SSD's health information, then you can use DriveDx (free trial period) and post the complete text report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper on the forum editing toolbar. The Apple NVMe based SSDs don't have much in the way of health information, but the DriveDx report will include more health values for the listed attributes. What SoftRaid lists is worthless. I have no idea why some developers just make a mess out of the output as it is likely using the same open source utility at the core of such apps as DriveDx (many of the drive monitoring apps use the same core utility). I don't see anything in the SoftRaid report, but it is not showing all the values either.

You may want to temporarily turn off Filevault so you may get more details on the boot issue. Sometimes Filevault on the 2018+ models hides some important boot details. Follow the troubleshooting articles in the Apple article I linked in my earlier post as well. On the 2018+ models with T2 chip or M-series CPU, the process is near instantaneous to enable/disable.

When using First Aid don't trust the summary results even if they say "Ok". Click on "Show Details" and scroll back through the report looking for any unfixed errors & warnings.

Also, you may want to disconnect all external devices just in case one of them is causing a problem.

figleaf7 wrote:

yes it is seen by disk utility but it can't mount it.

Most likely file system corruption.

SMART comes up with one error you can see it under SSD Life Left.

That is not an error. Unfortunately I have no idea what that SoftRaid SMART information even means since it is not formatted and/or displayed properly. That is why I suggested posting the SMART report from DriveDx (free trial period & does not install anything when checking internal drives). You will see a night & day difference in the information presented by DriveDx's SMART text report & SoftRaid.

Unfortunately many times the SMART health attributes/information is not clear cut when it comes to SSDs, especially PCIe NVMe based SSDs such as the internal SSD used by M-series Macs. SSD manufacturers even mix up the values being shown for some of the attributes.

But also why is it other people are getting this too. Yes sounds more software related might even been due to new update by Apple.

Who knows, there are lots of causes for a non-booting drive. You have to follow the troubleshooting steps in the Apple article I linked in my first post here and the other tips provided by @Grant & myself.

Forget SoftRaid for analyzing your Mac's internal SSD or boot issues.

figleaf7 wrote:

Thanks so far all your advice I will do and in the mean time since this was a new laptop I had nothing to worry about to reinstall. The reinstall was also surprising. Here's the print out from DriveDX. I just hope after reinstall I'll watch for any changes and this may just be a software issue in upgrading macOS. So SMART works and its a 100%.not like before.

<DriveDX.log>

The SSD looks fine.

FYI, most SSD failures are due to the SSD's controller no longer communicating with the system so the physical SSD disappears completely from the system which tends to be noticed when powering on the computer/SSD & when waking from sleep. Sometimes an SSD may just be a bit slow to go ready so it may reappear after a warm reboot, but it is a sign of imminent SSD failure. Most SSD failures give you very little if any warning. There are no SMART health attributes for the SSD's controller.

Sometimes I have found an Apple PCIe NVMe SSD may report "Media & Data Integrity Errors" which can lead to macOS boot issues or performance issues (it may also show an increase in the "Error Information Log Entries"). On Intel Macs I can usually reset the SSD to resolve those errors (the error count remains, but the SSD no longer has the glitch), but I have no idea if there is any way to do the same on an M-series Mac since I haven't encountered such an issue yet. Otherwise only the "Available Spare" and "Life Percentage Used" are useful, but most people will never see those values move very much....it would take writing 100's of TB to make a significant change there & even if those values are exhausted & report bad, the SSD is likely to function for much longer since the better SSDs typically can write PBs of data before they fail completely due to worn out NAND memory cells.

Since you are able to boot the laptop, the issue is most likely due to file system corruption, or an issue with third party software, or possibly an externally connected device.

that SMART report has nothing of any consequence.

In Disk Utility, if the drive can not be MOUNTed, it may need RepairDisk/FirstAid to fix its directory.

an encrypted disk may demand its password before you can do anything.

I don't understand the situation.

How are you booting your laptop?

For which drive does SoftRaid say "No S.M.A.R.T"?

Is the physical drive even seen by Disk Utility? Within Disk Utility you may need to first click "View" & select "Show All Devices" before the physical drives appear on the left pane of Disk Utility.

An M-series Mac is unable to boot to any media including recovery mode if the internal SSD has failed completely, so if this Mac is booting to something, then the SSD has not failed completely....more than likely there is a software issue of some sort or perhaps a file system issue.

If your Mac doesn't start up all the way - Apple Support

Contact the vendor of SoftRAID for assistance.

My recollection is that support for that product is provided by OtherWorldComputing, OWC.

What does Disk Utility Say?

That is much more important than what softRAID says about a drive that is not owned by softRAID.

<< You may want to temporarily turn off Filevault ... >>

Remember that changing the drive status (encrypted <-> unencrypted) takes under a minute. But the actual conversion that change sets in motion plays out in the background over a period of hours to days. Also, it can not be cancelled or reversed until it complete. if you Restart the computer, it will resume where it left off until completed.

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

<< You may want to temporarily turn off Filevault ... >>

Remember that changing the drive status (encrypted <-> unencrypted) takes under a minute. But the actual conversion that change sets in motion plays out in the background over a period of hours to days. Also, it can not be cancelled or reversed until it complete. if you Restart the computer, it will resume where it left off until completed.

This is true for the non-T2 Intel Macs, however, the OP referenced a 2023 M3 Max, so encrypting/decrypting only involves the Filevault recovery key which is near instantaneous. The data is already hardware encrypted on 2018+ Macs with the T2 security chip or M-series Macs.