Thunderbolt Pegasus R4 Experience?

Hello everybody!

Sorry for this late reaction. On our office it was a madhouse... but we are back.

Our Promise Pegasus R6 is indeed unmounted two times last week. So al the data from our system (with the Terminal, Shell and Systemprofile) is send directly to the Promise Technology office in the USA.

The still working hard to find the problem. The also mentioned that the will send us a new R6 and take the old one back to examen the R6.

And last but not least, Apple Care Centre just called us yesterday with the question how things are now with the R6. We told our story and the came with the same proposel. To take our iMac back and examen the iMac to see what can causes this problem. But until that we wait to see what the new R6 will do.

We have now also an direct contact by Apple Care Centre to keep then up to date with the progress of the R6 from Promise.

So for everybody who has the same problem now, keep up the good faith. I think there will be an solution shortly.

Greetings from the Netherlands, Levin den Boer.

Well well well,

We are up-to-date with all the updates - including firmware updates and our two R6's seemed to work without issues - until late last week one of them started to play up again. Again, ejected couple of times by itself while we were working off it.

We haven't yet lost any data but I'm sure it's just a matter of time..

I really hope they sort out this issue soon as our whole post production workflow relies on these two R6's!

@Levin - I assume you haven't heard anything since they've arranged to pick up the R6 and the iMac?

It does seem like they only start to eject after heavy usage and if it gets warm in the studio.. I wonder if it's heat-related. Also the Thunderbolt cable connector gets quite warm, maybe the components inside the cable overheat? Just a stab in the dark...

Hello everybody,

We see the messages from all other users. Just to let you know we don't post every conversation we have with the main headquarters of Promise Technology. Because if we do that you will be lost in words.

If there is a good solution or update. We will write it directly into this disscusion form.

For pjburnhill: we still have contact. The R6 is not in stock in the Netherlands at the moment.

We've repacked our r4 (Marked DOA) and it's back to de distributor, including the log's and so on.

like the r6 mentioned by Levin, we ordered a new r4, but it has not yet been delivered. Distributor still can't tell us when to expect a brand new one.

unlike Levin's we running on a MacMiniServer 2.0 i7 again seen failed disks, and the Pegasus became unresponsive (volume dismounted, disk status failed, powerbutton does not work (had to pull powercable))

after powercycle volume was briefly mounted, than 2 disks failed, so got dismounted.

are the new one's really out of stock?, or.... who knows please tell, now running on two time 2 Tb Firewire disks.

@infotech: how are the LaCie's doeing, and are you using apple's cable's ?

kind regards, keep u posted.

I don't have an iMac. But using R6 with early 2011 MBP and thought this might help. Initially I connected MBP to ACD to R6 and noticed R6 ejects very frequently. I bought two TBD's and using with R6 - MBP to TBD1 to TBD2 to R6. Installed latest and greatest updates. So far I didn't notice any ejects. I am using R6 for Time Machine Backups and iTunes.

I connect the R6 with iMac, it's not stable. 2 Days after the arrival date, one of the Hard Disk Failure. Then,

I repacked the Promise Pegasu R6 (12TB) to Apple Store and they make a full refund for this unstable product.

What a bad experience with PROMISE product. I'm glad that Apple is so RESPONSIBLE to give me a full refund.

I would wonder if SYNOLOGY will make their NAS with Thunderbolt support. Then I should buy it with SYNOLOGY. As their product is MUCH MORE STABLE and RELIABLE.

R6 12 TB, iMac 27" 2011. Almost impossible to get the R6 to connect. Then, for some period it stays connected for days, and then again some day it won't even show up, or disconnects seconds after initial connection. Driving_me_MAD!

Know I can - but I'm more interested in solving the problem. I have so far tonigth discovered that it "has" to be an iMac/OSX-problem. Seems like the TB-controller freezes or in some way bugs up. I also see that there are frequent request from spotlight to correct errors in the db for R6-files - ejects often come in relation to this, and in addition scanning of R6 for TimeMachine storage. Have now excluded R6 from spotlight, chosen another TM-disk as backup location and afterwards disabled TM. In addition killed yet another backup program, Jotta, which I assume most of yous don't use, and therefore can't be the source of problems - but it might add to it, as it frequently scanns the R6.

So far, no ejects. But this is just 15-20 minutes of running - but all time high for today...

I'll post back.

Just to chime in...

We have a Pegasus R4 (4x1TB) connected to a Mac Mini (5,2) with all the latest updates to Mac OS X 10.7.1 including the Thunderbolt Firmware Update from 2011-09-19 (Port Micro Firmware Version 2.0.7).

While copying large amounts of data from an AFP-server via Ethernet to the R4 the RAID-volume suddenly ejects. Sometimes this happens almost at once, at other times i takes a couple of days before the eject occurs. When the ejects have started to appear, the RAID-volume will sometimes eject while the computer does nothing i.e. only showing the desktop.

During normal operation the Thunderbolt port "Status" is "Connected" and the "Link Status" is "2", however after the eject the port "Status" is still "Connected" but the "Link Status" is changed to "4294967295".

This behavior has been reported to Promise EU. We are still awaiting info from the Promise US Lab as to if this fault is fixable via a firmware update or if we should simply return the unit as "incompatible".

/U

Wow, this is all pretty interesting.

For those who are having trouble are your unit's in Raid 0, 1, 5 or 10? I am currently in Raid 10 due to being a photographer and needing as many backups as possible, I also have a WD USB HD used with Time Machine for another backup.

My setup consist of 3 2011 iMac's all connected via ethernet cable(Airport Extreme) and all 3 iMac's access and edit images from a R4 (4TB) unit using either Photoshop, Lightroom or FCPX, although with FCPX i import the files to a WD Firewire Drive and work from there, only because the iMac I use FCPX is not the iMac that the R4 unit is plugged into. The R4 is connected to 1 iMac that is considered the main iMac and gets the most usage. The main point being all 3 iMacs can edit files on the R4 unit without any issues and my entire workflow besides the FCPX files are all on the R4 unit.

As for speeds....Raid 10 is about 220/200 on the write/read blackmagic speed test. Actually copying of files from internal 1TB HD to R4 in Raid 10 is only about 130mbps(6GB movie file) Transfer speeds across the network connected to the ethernet cable(iMac to R4 unit) is about 100mbps. With the unit being 3/4 full(1.5TB) the blackmagic speed test drops down to about 160/160 for read and write however I'm getting about 80-100mbps across the network when copying files. I wish I could find a way to get faster speeds across my network but I haven't found any way to do it yet

I'm thinking of saying screw it and putting the R4 unit in Raid 0 and just having 1 backup via TM on a USB HD...I hate to do it but I didn't spend $1000 for a 100mpbs although it's faster than the 60mbps I was getting on the firewire HD's.

I also use a 2011 13.3" Macbook Pro with the R4 but this is also connected by the network(wired) While I'm on a 2011 i7 3.4ghz iMac the R4 unit is plugged into a 2011 i7 3.1ghz unit and the other one is a 2011 i5 2.7ghz so all iMacs are different and all are updated with the latest Lion OS which is interesting because I see some are blaming the iMac/OS...just all the more interesting.

I did email pegasus asking them if I could get a spare HD to have on hand and they said they don't sell them yet and if I get one from amazon, then my warranty is void.....stupid. I am a photographer and if I had to wait around 3 days for a new replacement HD to arrive cause one went out, I'd be ****** so I am thinking of just dumping the 4 - 1TB's and replacing them with 4 - 2TB HD from amazon for a total of $320...which then doesn't make sense on their pricing for the R4 8TB at $1500... when I can buy a R4 - 4TB and get 4 - 2TB replacement drives for a total of $1320 and have 4 - 1TB HD spare. The R4 - 8TB is a rip off.

I had a similar issue copying large amounts of data. After several attempts, I was able to narrow down to a iTunes video download. Error message was something like cannot copy file " " (one blank space) and ejects R6. I didn't find anyfile (including hidden), deleted the folder and was able to copy the data.

Chakravarthy, I had that with Time Machine backing up images to my Firewire drive...I had to narrow down the file which was a itunes movie download and exclude it for time machine to work.

I transfered 1.5TB's of data from my firewire HD to the R4 in Raid 10 and it took about 7 hours although I think it took longer. The download bar said 7 hrs to start out with however I had no problems copying 1.5TB's of data and it all checked out afterwards.

I plan to buy a new iMac 27" (instead of a Thunderbolt Display + Mac Mini = nearly the same price than the iMac). Did anybody already tried this configuration: MacBook Pro early 2011 -> iMac in Target Display Mode -> Pegasus R4? If so, was he able to use the Pegasus R4 in this cofiguration with the MacBook Pro? Sometimes I want to use the iMac only as a display for my MacBook Pro. Normaly this shouldn't be a problem, because of the new iMac's two thunderbolt ports (for daisy chaining?). But using the Pegasus R4 with my MacBook Pro, I learned that thunderbolt port not always seems to be equal to thunderbolt port.