Thunderbolt Pegasus R4 Experience?

Hi RNMVIDEO

Try:

1- update promise utility

2- update pegasus firmware

3- try tin foil around cable and connectors, change direction of cable thunderbolt or new cable

(try also changing port on pegasus, someone suggested left port )

4- install Lion, I think it is best supported Thunderbolt, if you can with fresh install , not upgrade, you can also

exchange current drive in your system with a temporary disk , install Lion and test it to verify if it helps

to understand about software issues with snow leopard

5- ask promise for a new TB unit including hdd

6- ask for a miracle

If none of them works....sent it out of the window 😟 and get new thunderbolt western digital drives.

(more simple raid 0/1 only and much slower but maybe more stable)

Let us Know

Hi,

I've been through all of this: replacement of device, firmware upgrade, TB cable foiling... Still at least 3 disconnections a day! We use it as shared storage for our MacMini server, it looked like an ideal solution.

Here is what Promise support states in our conversation:

This device is a semi professional device not a server storage. If the device is not used turn the device off. These disks are not server drives!

This is completely crazy. Not use for server storage? Please people don't buy this.

I don't know what say again....maybe latest firmware upgrade does not solved all issues, this can explain a lot of thunderbolt R4/R6 that are available over ebay usa/europe...

Before send it out the windows do you have another mac where test it?

If issues are confirmed simply eliminate Pegasus device.

Consider the possibility to buy western digital thunderbolt external drives...

Let us know if there are any news.

UPDATE:

So Ive got to give it to Promise for being on top of this issue.. They have been fast to respod and very understanding with my dilma. I received a second R6 from promise and after unpacking it and plugging it in it beeped.. This was new.. Whenever you plug the thunderbolt cable in it makes a very distinct beeping noise.. So iam happy that something is diffrent so far.. I updated the firm ware the software and any other ware that I came across.

I am happy to say after 4 days of running non stop i have no had a disconnect and the system seems to be running faster than before...Another big thing i noticed was the ends of the Thunderbolt cables do not get anywhere close to being as warm (borderline of hot) as the did from the previous chasis i received. So far so good.. Now that the system finally seems to be secure I am going to attemt to set it up with a macmin to act as a server as ive heard many great things about using it like this....

So Promise seems to be on the ball and at least for the time being my situation has been resolved succesfully... Now i Have to return theses two R6 chasis .....

AHA! You sir, may have helped to solve my problem with flickering on my external monitor (iMac) off of the 2011 17 inch MBP.

I'm planning on trying tin foil inside some (oh ****, what do you call them?) cable protector sleeves.

Thanks for the spark to my insight.

Just got my R6 yesterday (Amazon) and hooked it up to my iMac 27" (mid 2011). Was well aware of all the problems and subsequent resolutions mentioned in this thread, so was looking forward to a good experience. My problem is different... after 30 mins of run time, the temperature threshold for the backplane sensor climbs from 89 degrees F up to 118F and even up to 123F. The healthy threshold is set at <113F, so this excessive heat trips the green to an orange warning on the utility system health monitoring.

I have shut it down when it gets above 118F because I don't want to burn anything. I have the unit sitting on a shelf, and have moved it to an open desktop space and I get the same problem. I have talked to support and they are looking at system report files now. It will probably be a case of an RMA swap, but was wondering if anyone else has experienced this problem. This is NOT a problem I had anticipated...

Have you checked for a firmware upgrade? I believe the firmware upgrade from a month ago or so increased the "healthy" threshold to 50° C (122° F). At least, it did for my unit. My unit runs at about 47-48 C (116-118 F) and has been running continually for over two months.

@ke3z... funny that you should say this because yes, I did all the FW and other updates when I went through set-up. When I clicked on "check for updated" on the Promise Utility, it did a check and came back as "all software/firmware is up to date." I even did this check again with the Pegasus tech rep on the phone.

BUT, since you mentioned it, I thought I would go in and do a check for updates just one more time and LO & Behold!, it said I had a FW update waiting! So just now did the FW update and you were right; the threshold has been changed to 122F. So I am going to cancel my tech support ticket and start the 10-hour synch task now.

Thx for the response that prompted me to check one more time...

We have a new problem only peripherally related to the Pegasus RAID: on Mac OS X Server 10.7.x, new files and folders don't inherit permissions from the parent directory. It's not specific to the Pegasus RAID, it's true of any attached storage we've tried so far. Oddly, it doesn't happen with the internal server drives.

This seems like a big honkin' bug.

Just an update. I have been experiencing frequent disconnections with my R6 caused by my 900Mhz european cell phone. The problem is easily replicable by bringing my phone close to the unit. I have tried wrapping my thunderbolt cable in tinfoil, but moving my phone close to the unit, (<1 meter), will still result in random disconnections of the unit.

I have had a support ticket on the issue with promise for 5 weeks.

Here is the last response I received:

"The issue has already been addressed to the upper management and currently we are working on this issue. I am not sure about the ETA.Once the fix has came means i will update you."

It is a copy of the response I received two weeks previously requesting an update.

The unit has been on the market for over a year now, and I begin to wonder how long a fix will take to arrive...

Also a warning to anyone plugging it into a thunderbolt display, any continuous read/write to the Pegasus raid while playing sound through the thunderbolt display speakers will cause the sound to distort and become unplayable. This has been confimed by AnandTech to be a problem confined to the Pegasus Raid, and not to other thunderbolt external HD's.

Until Promise have improved the shielding on their case, and fixed the audio corruption issue on thunderbolt displays, I can only recommend people who live in europe or other 900Mz countries, or who want to play sound through their Thunderbolt Display speakers while using an external thunderbolt raid, NOT to buy the Pegasus raid.

I will update you all on the support response when I receive it.

This mighty be related to my problem as well with using the Thunderbolt cable to connect my pre Thunderbolt 2010 27 inch iMac to my 2011 17 inch MBP.

After getting numerous screen flickers/refreshes on the external monitor, I went to test my MBP at the local Apple store and I got no refresh problems. The Apple employee there asked if I had any devices near the machine, which, I did as I develop iPhone/iPad apps.

We thought it might be the devices updating over wifi that is causing the flickers. Moved the devices away, no problems.

This is after resetting the power management system several times and still getting refresh flickers.

I haven't been following the discussion, but have you tried a different TB cable?

This would be a quite strange situation to see if companies start offering TB cable cooling systems as a so called solution.

asasaki, that simply seems like a server issue, not a Pegasus issue. I run in to it all the time when I think that OS X Server should be as friendly as the Mac OS. It's not, it's UNIX. It's user hostile.

Making sure that the directories always get the parent's permissions is tricky under OS X Server. I think there are two ways to do it, but don't recall at the moment.

A Pegasus "should" just be a device that obeys the settings given to it ala the OS X Server.

Alex,

Right, I'm not blaming the Pegasus:

> "It's not specific to the Pegasus RAID, it's true of any

> attached storage we've tried so far."

However, it does affect the Pegasus RAID, and this is something anyone considering external storage for a Lion server should be aware of. It would have affected our choice (a lot!) if we were aware of it beforehand.

I can't believe a server OS would make it out the door with this kind of bug.

Asasaki, I hate to say this, but I think it's simply the way the server works.

It's incredably lame when compared to the ease of file sharing on plain old OS X, but I just think that's how UNIX works. And Apple just chose to put a GUI in front of it.

First of all, which OS X Server are you using? I'm not touching Lion Server with a 10 foot pole after using it last summer. Right now, I am using 10.6.8, but think that they should both behave the same.

From the Server Admin for AFP, select Share Points and I think what you have to do is determine if you want POSIX permissions or ACL (Access Control List) and make sure that the permissions are propogated (down) or inherited (from above). If you do that for the group settings, (and all your new users belong to that group), then all the new folders should get the proper permissions.

I know it bites, but it's been this way forever and I always have to relearn it whenever I set up a new server.