Thunderbolt Pegasus R4 Experience?

After returning the Promise Pegasus to Apple and getting a refund, I'm now using a Seagate Business Storage 4-Bay 16TB NAS, which is working flawlessly since day 1, albeit slower than the Pegasus drive. It also costed 2/3 of the Promise and has 4x more storage room!

I am happy to know that you succeeded in getting rid of your Promise Pegasus and that the NAS you got is suiting your needs, but unfortunately, for the most part of Pegasus users a NAS would not be the answer.

The fora seem to grow every day with complaints about the Pegasus malfunctions, and again most of the persons involved are stuck with a piece of equipment out of warranty, or with service unavailable, which cannot be returned notwithstanding the steep price paid for it in the assumption that it was a reliable and durable investment.

Just bad luck or bad faith?

YAY: finally, kudos to 3 guys at Promise (Jerry, Stephen and Victor) (i hope, but everything seems to be working again, although i did lose all my older backups).

NUMBER ONE PROBLEM: MY IMAC DID NOT HAVE THE PROMISE UTILITY INSTALLED. I INSTALLED THAT FROM THEIR SITE DOWNLOAD CENTRE, BUT THEY ALSO SENT ME A LINK TO IT.

granted, they haven't quite released the fully-functional mavericks (osx 10.9) version yet, but the older one does work in command mode to get reports out of it.

AFTER THAT, IT WAS NOTED THAT MY FIRMWARE VERSION WAS OUT-OF-DATE, AND IT REQUIRES THE LATEST ONE TO WORK WITH MAVERICKS (PERMISSION ISSUES, SOMETHING I ALREADY SUSPECTED WAS HAPPENING BUT APPLE ERROR MESSAGES ARE GETTING TO BE LIKE MICROSOFT IT SEEMS)

NEXT ITEM, MAC USERS CAN'T DOWNLOAD THE FIRMWARE UPDATE FROM PROMISE AND EXPECT IT TO WORK, THE .IMG FILE THEY HAVE WON'T WORK UNDER MAVERICKS (APPLE'S NEW PROPRIETARY FILE FORMAT BS AGAIN I SUSPECT).

SO, YOU MUST-MUST-MUST HAVE THAT PROMISE UTILITY INSTALLED AND THEN 'CHECK FOR UPDATES'. THEN INSTALL THE UPDATE VIA THAT UTILITY. THE INSTRUCTIONS SAY TO POWER CYCLE YOUR PEGASUS OR REBOOT YOUR SYSTEM... YOU MUST-MUST-MUST DO BOTH.

THEN, GOD, DEMONS, AND OTHER ASSPORTED SAINTS AND PROPHETS (PROFITS?) PERMITTING, YOU'RE UP- AND-RUNNING AGAIN.

I SURE WISH THE **** SOMEONE HAD SAID ALL THIS A WEEK AGO INSTEAD OF 'OH YAH, WELL WE TESTED EVERYTHING AND OURS WORKS'

GET THE WORD OUT TO PROMISE USERS GUYS AND GALS... GET THAT PROMISE UTILITY AND DO YOUR DUE DILIGENCE!!!

AND IF YOU CAN'T GET THAT HD TO WORK... THEY WILL SEND YOU THEIR EMAIL ADDRESSES - THESE GUYS DO GET IT DONE (BUT ONLINE SUPPORT AT PROMISE.COM... PAH)

Pegasus R6 user here who just got through a disheartening battle but WON!

Bosto's recent post helped a ton.

After reading page 14 through 27 on this forum and trying countless things to fix our Pegasus R6 issue we've encountered today, after updating to Mavericks, I made nearly no progress after hours of troubleshooting.

Our setup: 2013 iMac OSX 3.2 ghz i5 and two Mac Pros all connected to a chasis and sharing with the iMac that is directly accessing the Pegasus.

We've been using this setup for over 8 months now with virtually NO PROBLEMS. It's been awesome. We have a total of 10TB filled on our 15TB's. Using all three computers at once almost everyday.

After a crash in Filemaker Pro accessing a file from the Pegasus, we could not access the Pegasus any further. It just locked up. And since it was on the iMac we knew that the other two wouldn't be able to get any better results. The two Mac Pros had just finished updating to Mavericks and the iMac had downloaded the software but we were waiting to finish with this Filemaker file before saving, exiting, and engaging the install. Since it crashed, we decided to restart everything, see if it would open, and then go from there.

The restart automatically engaged Mavericks to begin installing on reboot. Understandable, we forgot it was ready to do this. We thought, no big deal.

When the install was finished, the iMac opened up just fine in Mavericks. It accessed Pegusus correctly and in fact, all three computers were back to normal with fast connections. Okay, now to this Filemaker file problem. Tried to open it back up, again it failed, just locking up. Same exact way. Couldn't do anything. So, again, we had to restart all three computers (because if we just shut down the iMac it would obsructively eject from the other two without warning).

On this reboot a red light appeared and the Pegasus wouldn't mount... In which all of us tensed up a bit.

It wasn't even in disk utility. Though, I could open Promise Utility and it reported a dead drive.

I then followed Bosto's steps (post above mine in all caps) and ureika, the red light disappeared and the Pegasus is mounting on all three computers.

As far as the crashed Filemaker file... I think I'll count my losses here if I can't recover. Either way, not nearly as frightening as our R6 crashing.

BUT P.S. We have everything backed up on G-Drives stored in a deep dark dungeon nowhere but a select few have the keys to. Everyone should do the same. No matter how large, fast, or up to date these drives get... They'll fail... But just speak nicely to them and they may last a little longer than usual.

THANKS AGAIN BOSTO

Good post thanks for that, I am running my R4 with no utility software installed or updates since i purchased it, there have never been any issues related directly to the unit, it just works under mountain lion.

I will follow your advice come Mavericks time

Live4 and Cowb... you are very welcome. Truly though, those 3 guys at promise deserve the accolades, all I did was delve into *** could be the probelm and then make enough noise to get noticed by Promise because their online support dropped the ball and some marhetter posted that obnoxious and unusful adware saying they had no problems., and then post the solution we arrived at. I think too many post, then just see something shiny and wander off silently after they actually get a solution that just might help someone else too. I posted the same on 2 other threads as well, and there seem to be several complaining about this same issue. I wonder if other HD users are also facing similar issues. Too bad someone didn't post a: "Please ensure you have..." as a fitrst response. Honestly, the R4 worked right from plug-in on Mountain Lion so I had no idea there even was a Promise utility required or firmware updates required through it.

And yes, full backup with Time Machine at a good speed, and successful incrementals accomplished!

My company has delayed the upgrade to Mavericks due to this issue. We can't afford to have the drive messed up since it will mean the loss of our FTP server and such. I was using the utility already under Lion, and hopefully as long as I update the firmware as you say it won't be a problem when it comes time to bite the bullet and upgrade. I would love to hear from other users about their experience with Bosto's process.

It appears this nightmare is here to stay.

I tried and followed the method suggested by Basto, since I had been already using the Promise Utility, but:

- the existence of a firmware upgrade is duly reported by the Utility;

- I accept to download it, it duly donloads, then

- the Utility reports that the update cannot be located and remains just stuck with that.

And this has nothing to do with Mavericks: I tried under Mountain Lion and got the same error.

Promise people, I promise: never again.

So my problem (see previous post by myself) has been the impromtu disconnect/eject. This was under Lion and Mavericks, firmware/utilities all fully updated to no avail. Sleep/hibernate set correctly according to Promise support. This has been going on since september when I forst contacted web support. Slow responses finally ended up with an RMA for replacement except that...and I quote from my last web support submission today..

" I have requested a status report of my replacement unit on Oct 28th, Oct 30th, Oct 31st, Nov 7th with the only reply was that the unit was to be shipped Nov 4th. It is now Nov 14th and I have no word from Promise confirming the shipment date nor the status of the unit nor any shipping waybill number so that I can track the unit.

Am I to assume that Promise has now lost my replacement or that Promise does not intend to replace the unit?

Please advise today.

You may also see a copy of this post later today in the Apple website that covers member's distressing times dealing with Pegasus units as well as the abysmal support from Promise."

And accordingly I have not heard a peep from them so what am I to assume? Oh yeah, I also forgot to mention that their rep in Taiwan in the middle of the RMA process (and after I sent the unit back as requested to the address as requested (personally delivered) has now requested the unit be sent to them! So now two branches of the same company want the one unit!!!

Weird eh?

I shall update once Promise has found one of my real and one of the imaginary units.

So after some time my unit is finally on its way home tonight, Nov 15th. My R4 troubles are in prior posts (2) and finally after sending an email on Nov 14th to Victor things progressed at a very rapid rate and explanations given. If this last bit of service is what Promise can achieve on a regular basis then it would make them proud and the customer a very satisfied customer.

So, now I am indeed a happy customer thanks to the efforts of Victor, Alan and Bulermo who assured me 'action' and a good result is what they delivered.

So, thank you Victor and your team for taking my issue on board.

I recently posted that I had trouble installing Maverick on my R4 that I use as startup disk.

I have just performed a successful firmware update on the R4 and now was wondering if ANYONE has SUCCESSFULLY upgraded to Maverick when using the Pegasus as startup?

Please let me know.. thanks!

Steve... as I am now staring at a Peg 4 that's fully lit up with solid blue lights... I would really appreciate it if you could perhaps share the steps to your success in performing the upgrade. I'm thrilled you got it done but it would be extremely helpful if you could recount the steps.

My Peg R4 and Mini have been running seamlessly around the clock for months and months without a problem. I've had the Promise Utility installed but haven't updated the firmware or the utility app in a long time. Everything was running perfectly stable without a hitch.

Today I got trampled on by Mavericks. I wasn't actually intending to do the update to 10.9 but somehow or another on a reboot it did what it did and since that time I can't even power off my Peg R4. It's lit solid blue in all four bays along with the power light and the thunderbolt. Sadly, when I tried to launch the Promise Utility and ask it to check for updates, I get a connectivity error of some sorts. I've also luanched terminal to try and access it that way. Unfortunately, I just won't budge from it's bright blue light blaze.

I rely on this configuration and in spite of some of the problems voiced in earlier posts and threads, I've been quite pleased with the Peg 4. But GOOD GRIEF! FUBAR is an understatement. I've just sent Victor a note directly but I'm guessing he is buried at this point. I really need to get this resolved and quickly as they office is open tomorrow and I'm traveling 2 days later. Victor? Promise? Anyone? Please. I need some help here.

I've tried to update the device using the CLI and Terminal reports there's not device connected. Wonderful. So I can't turn it off and power cycle it and I can't see it in order to do anything in it, on it, around it.

I would really appreciate your help.

Robert

Hi Matchless & NPK Nick,

I'm pasting the post that I did a coupd of weeks ago when I was in a panic!

I don't really have a solid explanaton on why I git back up and running..

It seems that installing Maverick on the main computer and not on the external HD fixed the issue... but no idea why!

Not sure if this helps?

Previous post....

I use an R4 RAID 10 as my startup disk. Although issues have been reported (on this thread) in the past with the Pegasus, My setup has ran perfectly for the past several years with zero disconnects. That is until last night when I decided to upgrade to Maverick.

I upgraded to the R4 drive when it asked me which disk to upgrade to.. halfway through the install everything went grey and it hung!.. After leaving it for several hours it was still hung

Debug steps:

- Booted my iMac from its internal drive which it did OK and was on OSx 10.8 Checked Disk utils to see the Pegasus and it was not mounted.

- Disconnected the thunderbolt cable from the iMac and booted a Macbook Pro with my Pegasus as startup drive over the thunderbolt and it worked!!

- Conclusion was my Pegasus looked OK although I was still on OSx 10.8. Problem must be somehow my iMac 10.8 had got it's Thunderbolt port screwed up.

- As things couldn't get much worse and considering I'm covered with Applecare I decided to upgrade the iMac to Maverick and see if this fixed my Thunderbolt port issue.

- It did!!.. Running from the iMac OSx 10.9 I could see the Pegasus mounted in Disk Utils!! :-)

- Changed my startup disk back to the Pegasus and I'm now booting up ok and up and running from the OSX 10.8 on the Pegasus!!

Now I'm totally reluctant to try and update the OSX on the Pegasus to 10.9!!!

I know that my setup is a bit unique but has anyone heard of Maverick breaking the thunderbolt port?

I have no final explanation either, but I strongly doubt that Mavericks had any thing to do with your problem.

My experience shows that a very delicate issue concerning the Promise is the firmare and its compatibility with the operating system being used.

It may well be that the firmware update performed under Mavericks, but (obviously) with a firmare version issued before Mavericks came out, resulted in the freezing, or that some other unknown factor occurred during the updating process and prevented the completion of the latter.

All I know is that my Pegasus had self ejecting and freezing problems before upgrading to Mavericks, that the same problems persisted after upgrading to Mavericks and that they finally disappeared after the Pegasus firmare upgrade to the last available version. Mavericks had no influence whatsoever.

My suggestion is that you should go on and install (or upgrade to) Mavericks on the Pegasus: if the Raid is not broken and the Pegasus is duly detected I can see no reason to hesitate.

As per my previous post Pegasus returned my R4. Since then it has worked flawlessy on my iMac and MBP, switching (cables) so that TM backups can be made. No more self-ejects or lost drive. Works as well as it did when I first purchased the unit...so very happy.

When first purchased R4 was fully updated and running under 10.8. I continued with all updates for R4 and iMac/MBP up to and including Mavericks. The unit slowly degraded under 10.8 and finally refused to connect several weeks after running under Mavericks.

Promise undertook repairs (replaced failing HDDs???) and the unit works perfectly.

Therefore I can only conclude that the problem was not a result of the OS or upgraded OS or firmwares...just a failed unit.