Thunderbolt Pegasus R4 Experience?

We just got one in at our office and this morning had the unmount problem - set up a huge transfer last night came in to see that one of the drives had ejected. I started to resume the transfer when suddenly Pegasus ejected and now won't seem to come back.

I also cannot even power down the drive - holding the power button down does nothing. I could pull the plug on the thing but am hesistant to do that until I hear back from Pegasus.

Tried plugging into different thunderbolt ports and still won't remount. No idea what to do now...

This is on an iMac 27" so for what it's worth it's more evidence to suggest that there's issues with the drive and that specific machine, even if it's only circumstantial...

Contacted support but currently in a holding pattern until I hear back.

I took delivery of the R6, and a 27" imac on Friday, aong with the Apple Thunderbolt cable. I've struggled to get the R6 to connect at all to the imac, but it works flawlessly on my macbook air.

This morning it suddenly showed up on the imac when I connected the thunderbolt cable with both units already switch on. Saving a 45Gb file to the R6, and re-opening it has proved fine, with pretty impressive speeds too.

I then tested my iphone 4s (UK), sending and receiving a couple of texts wih the iphone about 30cm away from the cable and that was fine. However i thn made a call from the iphone, whilst holding the Thunderbolt cable next to the handset and the R6 disconnected straight away ! I've made a received several more calls in the last 20 minutes and the R6 has been OK, not disconnecting.

I've also noticed that the Pegasus Compatability List v1.3 ( published on 22nd november) lists Imac 21" as a compatible host system, but there's no mention of the 27" Imac - suggesting they are indeed aware of an issue.

Tony

mustardpost.com

Since my earlier post, I've had the R6 unmount itself six times, but only when making a call from the iphone, with the thunderbolt cable held againt the phone. I've made several calls sitting at the imac, with the phone to my ear, and the cable a normal working distance away from me, and haven't suffered any disconnects.

Tony

Wrapping the thunderbolt cable in tin foil DOES work !!!

I did this on Monday evening, and in the 3 days since I havent had the RAID dismount itself once, even when holding the phone against the cable whilst making a call - whihc dismounted it instantly without the foil.

Its not the most elegant solution but it does work.

Pegasus and Jigsaw here in the UK, have confirmed to me that it is a known issue ( and with all the thunderbolt equipped Mac's too, not just the 27" imac) and they are working on a fix, but wouldnt confirm whether that would mean a replacement cable, or a firmware update. I've told them that tinfoil does the trick 😉

Tony

just finished the install of a new Pegasus R4 8 TB (riad5 6TB left) the first Promise (2 months ago) was DOA and had 2 defective disks.... connected the new one to a lion 10.7.2 MacMiniServer, during last week it has copied 3,8 tb without problems while copying large amounts of data (using Synk Pro) i held my iPhone 4 (KPN-NL) very near the cable, on both ends (not wrapped with tin-foil) called myself while using DECT->iPhone4 and iPhone4 -> DECT, no dismounts, received sms, ringing, talking etc, stable. All is up to date, MacMiniServer, Promise app, etc etc.

Cable is original Apple, one of the first Cables available in the NL, back than (with DOA Promise) it took 3 weeks to get it.. cable does get a bit warm, but not too much, but that's why i did'nt wrap the tinfoil.

the Pegasus is the only thunderbolt device connected to the MacMini, we do have other firewire and/or USB disk connected to the server (for backups)

just to let you know, maybe we're just lucky, but i assume there are more stable users out there..

Pegasus R4, Revision Number: A2

Physical disks: Hitachi HDS72302 firmware: MN6OA5C0

kind regards form the Netherlands

I've had my Pegasus R4 for a few months now. I am trying to use it as a backup drive. So I take it out once a week and plug it into my 27" iMac. Getting it to appear on the desktop - anywhere - has been a nightmare. It fails more often than it succeeds, and I have had to get into the habit of making perhaps a dozen attempts to get it up by rebooting the computer and the Pegasus R4, replugging cables etc. etc. Massive waste of time and money.

As soon as I can scrub the disc, I will return it to Apple for a refund.

I'll share my experience as well. Set up the R4 4TB a few days ago. Had 500GB to transfer and had to baby it along because it kept ejecting. After it was done copying it would even eject while idle. At this point I had a brand new Mac Mini Server sitting on top of the R4, plugged into the left side (facing the back) and a VGA display adapter plugged in on the right.

At one point I accidently hit the R4 cables I noticed the R4 eject. I got it back up on the desktop and played with the cables again and it ejected and I traced it down to the power cord or so I thought. After playing around with different power cords, surge protection, outlets it became clear that it wasn't power related, in my case anyways but bumping the cables no longer ejected the R4 but it still ejected just not as much.

I also tried removing the display adapter but that didn't help either.

I then decided to physically move it to where it was supposed to live in the server room thinking that if the R4 was faulty it might take awhile to find a solution and in the mean time I could play with the new Mac Mini Server. I put the server 12" away from the R4 and also turned off bluetooth and the Airport on the Mac Mini Server thinking it might be related to the iPhone issue described above and moved the display adapter to the left side port (facing the back) and the Mac MIni server to the right port.

I transfered the R4 contents to an external FW800 drive and it didn't have an issue for the entire transfer but it also didn't take as long as the first transfer so not sure if it has anything to do with heat build up. After the transfer was done I went to lunch but when I came back the OS said there was a kernel fault and it restarted. The R4 was not mounted on the desktop and it was actually locked up because it wouldn't shut down using the power button. After pulling the power to it and plugging it back in it came back up again.

Since then it's been stable 12 hours now but it also hasn't seen a lot of activity as I don't have enough faith to use it in a production capacity. I have a trouble ticket into Promise and will report back here if anything gets resolved.

Well, well. I feel lucky to have stumbled upon this post.

Was about to shell out some serious dough on a Mac Mini + Pegasus R4/R6 setup as a home/office server, but will have to start looking for alternatives. I can't have this thing dismounting on me at the drop of a hat without any rhyme or reason.

Why is this still not being acknowledged? Surely sweeping the issue under the carpet is much worse than acknowledging it publicly and letting consumers know that a fix is in the pipeline and will be available soon?

Also, not very clever from Apple to only have one main partner for a TB storage solution with 4/6 drivebays. I'm aware Lacie do the little Big Disk, but no TB compatible 4-drive bay RAID 5 as far as I can tell.

I am aware that clearly people with issues will stumble upon this post, but surely that doesn't mean that the other users have never seen this intermittent eject behaviour, right? No?

Any other decent RAID-5 alternatives (NAS) out there for a Mac and Windows environment?

Wimdows,

I have 2 R4 4TB Promise Thunderbolt units, both running in Raid 0 and haven't had any issues. I also own the iPhone 4 from Verizon which sits in front of the R4 for hours each day...no issues. I wouldn't count out the Promise Thunderbolt Drives and I can tell you when you have read and write speeds of 500MBps it's well worth it.

Steven

Hi ulf I'm still waiting for a response from jigsaw who supplied the drive, they say they are waiting for a response from promise/apple. Have you heard any more recently?

I've heard nothing since apple contacted me weeks ago following the YouTube video post.

I'm sick of the pointless posts in this forum from people saying they have no problems with their drives, as we know there is a problem and are getting no information regards a solution.

Keyvid,

lol. I'm truly sorry you are having problems but it would be unfair not to say something to Wimdows when he is basing his decision on a hand full of people having problems. Maybe you should call up Promise, ask them how many units they have sold and count the failures...it's most probably within the exceptable yet "unexceptable" failure rate that everyone should expect from electronic devices. Just because you are having problems doesn't mean Wimdows should stay away and a reason why I said to not count them out.

As with any product, you are going to have some that fail, I'm sorry you are having problems but clearly there are others that aren't so don't get your knickers in a twist because you haven't gotten your problems worked out yet. If you haven't heard from Apple in a few weeks, I suggest calling them, every single day if you have to or return your product.

I still highly recommend the Promise Pegasus R4 & R6 units.

Thanks for the reply. Glad to hear some people don't see any of these intermittent dismount problems.

I may take the plunge in the new year. After all, I can always return the unit if it doesn't behave.

Cheers,

Wim

Smphoto74 wrote:

Keyvid,

lol. I'm truly sorry you are having problems but it would be unfair not to say something to Wimdows when he is basing his decision on a hand full of people having problems. Maybe you should call up Promise, ask them how many units they have sold and count the failures...it's most probably within the exceptable yet "unexceptable" failure rate that everyone should expect from electronic devices. Just because you are having problems doesn't mean Wimdows should stay away and a reason why I said to not count them out.

As with any product, you are going to have some that fail, I'm sorry you are having problems but clearly there are others that aren't so don't get your knickers in a twist because you haven't gotten your problems worked out yet. If you haven't heard from Apple in a few weeks, I suggest calling them, every single day if you have to or return your product.

I still highly recommend the Promise Pegasus R4 & R6 units.

While your point is certainly valid, I think peoples frustrations (which are also valid) stem from the fact that this is a SUPPORT thread. While it's true that having stories of people who have no issues may help narrow the field the point remains that this thread is about attempting to find a solution to the issue and not offering one but merely cluttering up the thread with comments that don't apply to the issue at hand (ie: whether or not the unit is worth purchasing) do not benefit those searching for solutions.

For what it's worth: we are still having this issue at work, and it still seems to be completely random as to how it occurs. Going to try shielding the cable but the disconnects have happened without our iPhones being near the device - not to mention the fact that I've been on calls with my phone and not seen a disconnect.

As to wimdows and his desire to purchase the drive here's a little more food for thought: yes, some people have issues and some don't. But this has been an issue for me for almost two weeks now and have yet to have a real solution offered to me from Promise. It is now costing our company money since we cannot do the work we need to do. The last time they messaged me was to tell me they were waiting on word from a "supervisor" to send us beta firmware. Despite repeated messages to them I have yet to hear back about any further solutions, nor received the firmware.

These are not cheap drives, and I would suggest you invest your money with a company that at least offers the very basics in terms of customer support. So far, Promise does not seem to be one of those companies.

Just food for thought. (and yes, I realize that I have not added a solution to this thread...)

...they messaged me was to tell me they were waiting on word from a "supervisor" to send us beta firmware. Despite repeated messages to them I have yet to hear back about any further solutions, nor received the firmware.

That's what my support contact said as well sans sending me beta firmware. Now you have me wondering if they are just waiting out the return period so it can't be returned.

Maybe I'll give them an ETA as to when I'll be returning the unit back to Apple and see if that rattles some cages.

ehmjay,

I agree with that although I think it's well worth it, even the risk...It's just like my 3 xbox 360's, one died of the dreaded RROD however it's still well worth having them and any failure from the expensive Pegasus Units are still worth it. I promise not to write anymore on this thread about my experience since I would indeed just be repeating myself. lol