Areca Thunderbolt Universal Driver for Intel and Apple M1 Macs

Areca Technology Corporation announced that its current line of Thunderbolt products are compatible with Apple, Inc.‘s M1 Macs.

The company has provided a set of universal drivers that support both Apple silicon and Intel Macs.

The RAID storage X86 default driver has been moved to/system/library/extensions/ from macOS 11 for supporting Intel based Mac to boot from its volume. The X86 driver updates will only be possible with macOS updates. Since external boot via 3rd party drivers is not allowed on Apple silicon based Macs, the default driver doesn’t work on new M1 Mac, only for Intel-based machine.

The macOS 11 had not been integrated any universal KEXTs into macOS, which means that users need to install universal KEXT to support Areca Thunderbolt devices on Apple silicon. The company’s universal KEXT’s on Apple silicon can be installed in /Library/Extensions/, even if the firm’s RAID storage x86-only versions persists on the system in /System/Library/Extensions/.

The company’s universal drivers is no longer included in macOS Big Sur, which means you need to download the M1 driver from the firm’s website link and install Areca KEXTs manually. Below is the firm’s universal driver link for both Apple M1 and Intel Macs.

Resources:
ArcMSR for RAID storage    
ArcQFC for Fibre Adapter    
ArcSAS for SAS Adapter