Thunderbolt Pegasus R4 Experience?

My Pegasus R6 was delivered last week and I started transferring some 6TB as well as a full TimeMachine backup of my laptop (380GB). I left it running over night and sat next to is for the last few hunderd GB, to my alarm my laptop crashed, very unusual, I restarted and did the remaining 2-300 GB with rsync. Again to my alarm the drive suddenly dissapeared again, this happened several times. I kicked it off again and left it running over lunch, came back and it had finished, as I sat down to check it, it dissapeared again.

So, off the Google, after a few minutes I arrived here, to cut a long story short I can confirm that it is my iPhone, a UK (GSM) 4S that's killing it. While testing I managed to completely kill my laptop (top spec 17 inch, SSD etc.) and can disconnect the drive within seconds if I send myself a text with the phone near the cable.

I've no bothered to test whether it's the cable or the drive unit yet but with my phone on the other side of the laptop (right hand side) away from the cable it's been fine, move it to the left, near the cable, and it dies instantly as soon as I get a text or a call.

Very happy with the drive, I was about to send it back but now that I know what it is I can avoid the sitiation. I will probably contact Apple next week and get them to replace the cables with something with better shielding.

-John-

Hello,

I have a Pegasus R6 attached to my i7 iMac. My configuration is:

i7 iMac, first TB port --> TB cable connected to a --> Lacie TB drive --> TB cable connected to a --> Pegasus R6 drive --> MDP cable connected to a --> 2009 iMac (running as a second monitor)

On the second i7 iMac TB port, I have a wacom cintiq 21ux tablet (connected via a MDP to DVI Adapter).

Have been running with this setup for two weeks - the TB devices (Lacie and Promise) are always on. I've done many hours (and GBs) of Aperture to Lightroom photo migration(s) on the Pegasus. My iTunes library is on the Pegasus (many GBs). Not one R6 drop or disconnect.

I have had my iPhone 4S next to these devices many times (syncing and talking) with no issues.

Maybe I've been lucky because of the "daisy" chain setup?

Scott,

Where is your OS on the iMac or Lacie Drive or R6? I have Lion on my R4 and boot from the R4 and it seems really fast. I do have mine in RAID 0. lol I got 4 back ups on my one R4 unit and 2 back ups on my other R4 Unit(2 R4's on 2 different iMacs). No discounts from my iPhone 4(Verizon) from either unit. I don't use my internal HD at the moment but then again I only have the 1TB internal.

Smphoto74,

My OS is on the internal SSD of the i7 iMac. My R6 is running RAID 5 (factory default).

You are good then because of your SSD. I had to throw the OS on the R4. I'm getting a solid 450MBps write and read in raid 0.

Thanks for posting.

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.