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Infotech 24 7 Author

Level 2

166 points

Thunderbolt Pegasus R4 Experience?

Has anyone else got any first hand experience of the Promise Pegasus R4 (or R6) with their iMac? I bought mine this week and managed to load it up with around 1.4Tb (it holds around 3Tb) no problem. Now, today I can't get the drive to stay connected before it ejects for more than 5 minutes. It's driving me mad and I'm very concerned as I moved all my family video onto it from another drive and it won't stay connected long enough to get it back onto another drive again.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 2011 i7 3.4, 256Gb SSD and 16Gb RAM

Posted on Jul 16, 2011 8:38 AM

455 replies

Aug 6, 2011 12:39 AM in response to Infotech 24 7

The don't suggest that, but your drives will stay longer intact (or how do you say that in english). Think about the big company's were the have big servers for the people online, those machines are on 24/7 for yearssssss.

De drives in your R4 are special build for long lasting pleasure. And the told us the best performance you can get is to alway's leave your Raid machines on power.

When you turn on your R4 does your lights still blinking, because the R4 isn't done with the background actions. That's way the best thing is to leave it on, so the Promise Utility can do his background actions. The machine has an intern background tasking level, so when you turn your machine off it wound be able to do his actions.

I say, just leave the machine on and try that for a couple of day's.

Aug 8, 2011 5:22 PM in response to levindenboer1975

May I ask how you have your RAID set up? Is it primarily for backups and file storage or are you also using it for applications? I'm contemplating one myself along with am new mac mini to replace my aging iMac and three external drives. I am a semi-pro photographer and my wife is a graphic designer. Plus, we have hundreds of movies and thousands of songs we stream to two apple tv's and multiple sound systems. If you're using the drive for file storage how are you backing up your system and files? Using a separate drive, same drive, partition...or relying on RAID 5 redundancy. Any information would be both helpful and appreciated.

Aug 8, 2011 6:16 PM in response to rmichael777

I basically rely on Raid 5 redundancy but always have a spare drive sealed onhand if anything goes bad. If you purchase an R6 model with 6 drives, you have the option of Raid 6 where up to two drives can fail. However I still use Raid 5 on the R6 with spare drives. Back up on cloud or dropbox for your most critical files.

Infotech 24 7 Author

Level 2

166 points

Aug 9, 2011 1:08 AM in response to rmichael777

I use mine as my main Aperture, Final Cut X and iTunes drive (in RAID 5). I specifically bought it for this reason due to the speed and size of it. I then have an old Hive RAID 5 4Tb (firewire 800) that I use as my Aperture Vault but then you could use any drive really for the vault. It's not advisable to rely on even a RAID 5 drive as your only drive because although it's pretty safe against failure, it's no safer against any potential file corruption.

I keep my iTunes backed up from the Pegasus onto my TimeCapsule as I double that up as my NAS drive for my Sonos and my original AVCHD files that I use in Final Cut X are all archived safely to Blu Ray discs. This I find works best for me and touch wood I've never lost anything.

The great thing about the R4/R6 is that it's incredibly fast (even faster than my SSD in the iMac) so means Aperture in particular flies along with no lag anywhere.

Fingers crossed, since I left it on it hasn't ejected again but Pegasus have confirmed to me that they believe there may be an iMac firmware update required and they are in talks with Apple regarding this. I do believe the drive is fine, I'm just a little nervous when connected to an iMac at the moment.

Aug 9, 2011 4:11 AM in response to Infotech 24 7

Our iMac is the main machine with all the Aperture Library's. This contain only the previews of our images.

The real images are stored on our R6. And the Vaults we have made for each Aperture Library are stored on our Deonet 1.5 Tb Raid Hot Swappable drives. And we are totaly relying on the Raid5 of the Pegasus R6.

Infotech 24 7 Author

Level 2

166 points

Aug 9, 2011 6:20 AM in response to levindenboer1975

Have you had ANY ejects? Mine has just ejected AGAIN (about the 30th time now and this is my 2nd R4). I notice you use an iMac and it appears to be the iMac that I'm having the issues with. It never ejected when it was plugged into a MacBook Pro.

I would STRONGLY recommend that anyone with an iMac does not buy one these drives until a firmware fix has been released because I'm not the only one with the problem and it's happened with 2 drives now.

Aug 9, 2011 6:24 AM in response to Infotech 24 7

I don't have any problems at all with the connections.

Are all the lights off blinking on your R4? Background task from the Promise http://127.0.0.1:8080 in your safari browser and you will see what it is doing.

But if your Laptop doesn't show this problem and you have a second R4 all ready, than i think it's the thunderbolt port on your iMac that causes this problem.

Dit you tried to connect to the second thunderbolt port on your iMac?

Infotech 24 7 Author

Level 2

166 points

Aug 11, 2011 6:36 AM in response to Infotech 24 7

Can anyone with a Pegasus R4/R6 please try keep iTunes running in background and maybe sync the odd iPod/iPad/iPhone now and again and see if it stays connected? This is for iMac only as I believe from my experience plugged into my MacBook Pro it's fine on everything else. EVERYTIME it's ejected (and it's a LOT of ejects) it has been running iTunes. In particular, ripping a CD or Syncing my iPhone.

Just hope this is a firmware fix and not back to Apple for repair.

Aug 14, 2011 7:58 AM in response to Infotech 24 7

I just did the things you sayd, and our R6 is still running and has no connection failure at all. Wich iphone software are you running? And are you also using iTunes 10.4 (80) 64-Bits. And iphone version 4.3.5.

Infotech 24 7 Author

Level 2

166 points

Aug 14, 2011 10:03 AM in response to levindenboer1975

I've been doing lots of testing and it was definetely when I hit the iTunes sync BUT it looks like it could be either a fault iPod cable or even my hub. I've changed my iPod cable and so far I can't get it to eject. It's crazy that something that simple could have caused so much trouble.

Aug 14, 2011 10:06 AM in response to Infotech 24 7

Wow, indeed! But so far so good i read! With this good news you are now able to realy make use of the R4. Have fun with it.

Aug 26, 2011 8:36 AM in response to levindenboer1975

Hello here we are again!! And we get today for the first time in weeks the same problem again! It worries me. Beceause we are working on the RAID5 drive's from the R6 and just suddenly it unmount it from the desktop!

This isn't normal i say! The thing must be running all times without any strange umounting moves!!! ****...

Infotech 24 7 Author

Level 2

166 points

Aug 26, 2011 8:40 AM in response to levindenboer1975

Mine has been running for weeks now without problem and I power mine off when I shut down the iMac. My problem is without question a dodgy USB Hub and iPod cable because mine only ever ejected when I plugged anything into the cable.

Aug 26, 2011 4:46 PM in response to levindenboer1975

Just to confirm, you are attaching to to iMac?

Aug 27, 2011 12:28 AM in response to chiudesign

@chiudesign yes, on the new iMac

@infotech 24 7 We are not using any USB hub or iPod cable on this iMac. It's a standalone workstation.

Thunderbolt Pegasus R4 Experience?