Thunderbolt Pegasus R4 Experience?

I'd put money on it that Engineers at both Apple and Promise have had this thing in a chamber and have ran every interference test imaginable.

I'd also put money on it that they know exactly what this problem is.

What is worrying is that they have not come out with a solution!

And now for the puely guessing part:

I would suspect that if it turned out to be a Promise issue that Apple would have dropped all association with that company like a rotton egg. Which lends the possibility that a funamental design issue may exist with the TB interface.

But then why would the issue just seem to appear on Promise????

😕

I suppose one day we will find out!

Steve -

Just re-iterating what I said in my post:

No - the issue is not solely with Promise. The identical problem happened in my Lacie eSATA hub, which barely hit the retail shelves last month. The fact that two different products from different companies exhibited this behaviour is what prompted me to look at the interference issue and solve it.

I've had extensive talks with Promise, Lacie, and Apple. None of them have admitted to knowing the issue. Truthfully, I don't think Promise nor Lacie know about this: because both companies asked for me to return the item. In Promise's case they actually sent me a brand new RAID chasis in hopes that it would fix the issue (it did not, of course). Lacie offered to replace the unit, but I was able to solve it before that happened.

Most definitely.

When using a Thunderbolt-to-Firewire adapter there were never any disconnects.

When using a Thunderbolt-to-ethernet adapter there were also no issues, ever.

However, any item that needed a standard TB cable was subject to this problem.

Wowww If this is an underlying design issue with Thunderbolt then I wonder how deep this goes?

If no SW workaround exists for a HW issue then this could be big!

As usual Wikipedia gives a great overview of the technology..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_%28interface%29

All through this thread we have all been pointing the finger at Promise.. but maybe they are as much a victim as anyone in this?

To reiterate my point, I had a Dell monitor hooked up to my TB port on my 17" MBP ala a minidisplayport cable while I was developing iPhone apps. After a while, I started to get nasty flickers on the Dell.

I replaced the Dell with my 27" preTB iMac and after a while, I also started to get flickers.

When I took my Mac into the Apple store to determine what the problem was, an employee stated that it might be the devices near it.

This sparked a memory of sitting in my friend's office and hearing the external computer speakers start buzzing just before a cell phone call came in to one of our phones. Of course I had my phone, several iPhones and their cables right up against the monitor and its cable.

Electromagnetic interferance from neighboring devices was the cause of it all.

Covering issues that have been dealt with/experienced on this long and sorry chain. I have had the R6 for about 10mths now. Initially had issues with spontaneous disconnects which after various firmware updates seem to have stopped. However, still having huge issues with file transfer/backing up to the Pegasus unit. It reguarly freezes midway through the file transfer and I have to unplug the Pegasus unit and power down my Imac to get things working again. I have tried unchecking the "put hard disks to sleep when possible" box in energy saver which doesnt seem to work when you leave the imac unattended. I have noticed that if I start a file tranfer/copy and continue to work on the imac that the file transfer does complete, so at least for me it seems that the disconnect/freeze seems to be somehow related to inactivity on the imac. I have tried extending the computer sleep/display sleep options in energy saver to "never" but if I leave the mac unattended the freeze still happens. very strange. Apologies if I have broken protocols by bombing in midway through this thread.

Hi Rob,

The only advice I can really give is that you follow the same steps as I did: get all the thunderbolt devices away from ANY cables, possibly elevate the units off the ground near any other devices. It's been two weeks now and all my thunderbolt devices are still operating fine. Previously they couldnt have more than 12 hours, so I think it's safe to say my issues are permanently solved.

After March 14, 2012 when I installed a patch from Promise, my R4 has been running 24/7 without a problem.

When I eject the drive, it goes to sleep.

When my MacBook Pro returns it resumes after plugging in the Thunderbolt Cable. My external display is part of the T-Bolt chain. It works as expected.

All the cables are Apple Brand.

I also have the F-Wire to T-Bolt and the Ethernet to T-Bolt cables.

Thanks agent42b. A further update. I received my replacement hard drive for my R6 from promise. The unit kept freezing during the rebuild of my raid 5 array and would not complete. I decided to attach the R6 to my mac air instead and hey presto, the rebuild of the array was able to complete. I then tried a time machine back up of my mac air to the R6 and it was able to complete without freezing. I then re-attached the R6 to my iMac and tried a time machine back up of both the ssd and the 1tb sata drive together and also just the ssd by itself (I thought it could be ssd vs sata related) but both times the R6 froze. I repeated this whole exercise again to make sure it wasn't a fluke, but same result - the mac air doesn't cause the R6 to freeze but the iMac does. Not surprisingly, promise have now pointed me back to apple support to fix the problem............help me dear god!

So Rob, since you admit to bombing in midway through this thread, did you at least bother to read the majority of it and the latest offerings regarding separating your electromagnetic devices as far from you R6 as possible. Because if you didn't, then your apology means nothing, but if you did, then why haven't you discussed what you HAVE done to take all the input from this thread to heart? It would be helpful to know what your electromagnetic posturing is with respect to the problem for which you are asking for help. Can't help "bombers" who aren't even trying to help themselves, you know.

I have read the entire post and several others actually. I have year's worth of back and forth with promise I can. Share with you if you want about the two hard drives that failed in less than 12 myths no doubt because of the continuous freezing. Per my most recent post, given the R6 doesn't freeze when hooked up to the mac air but does when it is hooked up to the iMac and everything is in pretty well exactly the same place (r6 in same place, mac air beside the iMac on the desk and using the same Tb cable) it would appear that electromagnetic interference is unlikely to be the cause of the problem in my case (and as far as I could tell a few others that have contributed to this post). I thought I may have been helpful in sharing the results of the "test" I did, so I do apologise for not being helpful. Good luck.

Hi Everyone,

Sorry. My question is not related to any heat issue but rather to a problem with the latest R4 firmware and utility.

The firmware update added a feature that automatically powers off the R4 when the machine is turned off. The same feature also starts up the R4 when the Mac starts the power cycle. It is this feature, the start-up process, where I'm encountering a problem.

As the feature is designed, the R4 powers on when I power on my MBP. However while the R4 completes the boot-up cycle, my MBP freezes....the screen remains a blank white with no interface, forcing me to hard reboot. It's only after I hard reboot my MBP that my MBP starts up correctly, eventually giving me the login interface. Mind you, the R4 doesn't shut down when hard rebooting my MBP (I haven't figured that one out yet but that's not really my issue right now).

I've tested this some by manually powering on the R4 and waiting for it to complete the power/boot-up cycle and then starting my MBP. In this case, my MBP boots up fine, no issues, no need for hard-reboot etc.

Any ideas on the cause of the problem?

Some specs on my machine, if they're helpful.

MBP (OSX Mountain Lion), 15", 2.4GHZ i7, 16GBRAM, with two SSDs, one OWC Mercury Extreme (6G SATA) 480GB (boot-drive) and one Apple 512GB (data drive) connected to the R4 via the Thunderbolt port on my Apple Thunderbolt display.

I have the same problem with my RMBP. It occurs about 80% of the time; the other 20% it starts as expected. I usually wait at the sign in screen on my computer until both R4s (I have two of them daisy chained) finish their bootup, then I login. I have no explanation for the hanging on the white screen -- it always requires a hard reboot of the RMBP. Hoping for an update to the Promise Utility / Firmware. The last one was 10 months ago I believe.

The problem is I don't even get the log-in screen. I've set my boot-up for verbose mode, so I see this activity and then it goes to a white screen and nothing from there.

For the moment, it seems the only work around is to boot up my R4 and let it sit for about 2 - 5 minutes until it's online and then boot up my MBP. Boots up fine (and quickly) then.

I'd like to disable the auto power-down until they come with a fix, because frankly, its a pain in the bum. I've not found a CLI in this Pegasus utility. Have you?

Yes, I understand. 80% of the time my boot only gets as far as the white screen, no login. No, I don't see any CLI in the Promise software... I haven't hunted through all of the software to see if there's a GUI to do just that, but I'm guessing not.