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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

Oct 18, 2011 6:38 AM in response to Keyvid

Problem is there's no real way to determine the extent of the problem since the only people who appear on this thread are those having this issue. I was one of the first to purchase an R4 along with my new Mac mini and have not experienced a single disconnect/unmounting. Just thought I needed to mention that for the sake of perspective.

Oct 18, 2011 1:37 PM in response to Infotech 24 7

Dear all...

As previously stated we have a Pegasus R4 (4x1TB) connected to a Mac Mini (5,2) with all the latest updates to a clean installed Mac OS X 10.7.2.

We have seen random disconnects at times and when that happens the Thunderbolt "Link Status" is changed from "2" to "4294967295".

The above status change has now been confirmed by Promise US as a hardware related fault - possibly related to the Apple Thunderbolt cable.

And now for the really interesting part...

We can now reproduce the disconnects reliably by having a mobile phone (GSM)

near (10 to 20 cm) the Thunderbolt cable, and give the phone a call - instantaneous disconnect.

By moving the phone even closer (5 cm) the disconnects appear even without a call being made.

We tried this with several different phones - same result.

We will try a different Thunderbolt cable later this week to see if the problem persists.

In the meantime - check your phones...

Keyvid

Level 1

0 points

Oct 18, 2011 3:01 PM in response to rmichael777

Iphone 4 the culprit. Nice one Apple!

Keyvid

Level 1

0 points

Oct 18, 2011 3:03 PM in response to Keyvid

Thanks Ulf. Think you may have hit the nail on the head, mine was disconecting all morning then ok in the afternoon. I couldn't understand it. then put my phone by cable and instant disconnect.

Infotech 24 7 Author

Level 2

166 points

Oct 18, 2011 11:37 PM in response to Ulf Soderlund

That's really interesting because as I mentioned right at the beginning of this discussion all those months ago, mine used to eject when I started to sync my iPhone in iTunes. The strange thing for me now is that mine hasn't ejected for at least a month and I've been hammering it with large copies of 500Gb+ between this and Firewire 800 and LaCie Thunderbolt on a regular basis. I've also been using it with Aperture daily and I can no longer get it to eject and this is all since that last Thunderbolt update from Apple.

Where I'm even more intregued though is that if I put my iPhone 4S literally ON the cable and do all sorts such as SMS, make/receive a call mine STILL doesn't eject.

Oct 19, 2011 2:08 AM in response to Infotech 24 7

Infotech 24 7, the iPhone 4S supports the following:

UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz), GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz) and CDMA EV-DO Rev. A (800, 1900 MHz).

Possibly only one of the above frequency bands are responsible for the Thunderbolt interference. In our case it would be either GSM 900Mhz or GSM 1800MHz.

The effect are more pronounced at the far end of the cable - just holding the phone in front of the RAID making a call will result in an instantaneous disconnect.

Infotech 24 7 Author

Level 2

166 points

Oct 19, 2011 2:12 AM in response to Ulf Soderlund

To be honest, I tried all that for a good 10 minutes. I held it against both ends of the cables, in the middle of the cables and both made calls and received them and it wouldn't eject. I'll try this evening with my daughters android phone.

Keyvid

Level 1

0 points

Oct 19, 2011 2:46 AM in response to Infotech 24 7

Attempted to recreate with the phone this morning with a camera running to capture the fault and disc won't unmount at all. Typical!!! I did install ios5 to iphone last night, thats the only thing that's changed.

Keyvid

Level 1

0 points

Oct 19, 2011 2:57 AM in response to Ulf Soderlund

Ulf, have you updated to ios5 and tried to recreate fault?

Oct 19, 2011 3:04 AM in response to Keyvid

Keyvid, we have confirmed the issue with several phones, one of them being a iPhone4 with iOS5.

Keyvid

Level 1

0 points

Oct 19, 2011 5:57 AM in response to Ulf Soderlund

Spoke too soon, started happening again although it worked fine all morning, managed to get the fault on video linked here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-VGVR2YDck

Oct 19, 2011 6:38 AM in response to Keyvid

Keyvid, thank you for posting the video - that is the exact behavior we are seeing here.

We have now been in contact with Promise EU - they were not able to duplicate this failure with their RAID-system.

We will however receive a replacement RAID later this week as well as a new Thunderbolt cable, this will hopefully give us the opportunity to pinpoint the faulty part.

Oct 19, 2011 8:16 AM in response to Infotech 24 7

Just off the phone with Apple EU - they have previously been notified about the disconnects. They have now been given the info regarding the mobile phone interference. Apple engineers are still investigating the problem at this point.

Apple EU have also been informed about this forum thread and they are actively monitoring it from now on.

Oct 21, 2011 8:13 AM in response to Infotech 24 7

Quick update…

Got a new Promise Pegasus R4 RAID - same kind of disconnects.

Spoke with Promise EU - they have now been able to duplicate the failure with their RAID-system.

Spoke with Apple EU - they will ship a new Thunderbolt cable to test early next week.

Oct 21, 2011 9:56 PM in response to Ulf Soderlund

I wonder if it's the cable. I've had mine for a few weeks now, on 24/7 and has up to 3 iMacs and a MacBook pro access at any given time and even by all macs at the same time with no disconnects. I do a ton of writing to the R4 unit.

Mine is in Raid 10 and my only complaint is that it's not very fast in Raid 10. I have to work out a new backup system and hopefully get it in Raid 0 but my data is data I can't afford to lose. I'm only getting about 120-130MBPS copying a 5GB file....only twice as fast as my FireWire HD.

Thunderbolt Pegasus R4 Experience?