Thunderbolt with Pegasus R4 heavily slows down boot performance of internal SSD

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Thunderbolt with Pegasus R4 heavily slows down boot performance of internal SSD

After connecting a Promise Pegasus R4 Raid with a Thunderbolt cable, my Mac Book Pro 2011 (Snow Leopard) needs about 60(!) seconds longer to boot from the internal SSD. Without the Raid connected, my MacBook Pro needs about 20 seconds to boot. When I press the power button, the display of the MBP is more than 20 seconds black before the bootsequece starts. I shorly can hear the CD drive beeing checked after pressing the power button - as usual. The RAID is the only periphal connected via Thunderbolt. No softwareupdates are available. Raid and SSD are pretty fast after the system booted. Is this behavior normal?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Oct 11, 2011 9:12 AM

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Answer 1

mrvoeg Author

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Oct 11, 2011 10:01 AM in response to mrvoeg

I plugged the cable into the other Thunderbold port of the Pegasus R4 and the problem is solved.

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Answer 2

Fortuny

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Oct 11, 2011 11:04 PM in response to mrvoeg

Some more 'war stories' about the R4 in this thread https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3181015 plus the differences in the ThunderBolt ports of it.

Stefan

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Answer 3

mrvoeg Author

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Oct 12, 2011 7:57 AM in response to Fortuny

Hi Stefan:

Thanks for the interesting link.

Marek

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Answer 4

Oct 21, 2011 10:26 PM in response to mrvoeg

Mrvoeg: what is your R4 set to as far as Raid (0, 1, 5, 10?). Could you post some copy speeds from your SSD to the R4 unit? I have a R4 in Raid 10 but I'm only getting about 120mbps when copying a 5GB to and from my internal HD to the R4. I only have a 7200rpm internal HD so I'm thinking that is the bottle neck in speed since the speed test on the R4 is 220/200 write read.

Thanks

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Answer 5

mrvoeg Author

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Oct 31, 2011 11:43 AM in response to mrvoeg

Smphoto74: The Raid is set to Raid level 5. Copying files is about 225 mbps from the internal drive but I have a SSD (SATA 300) in my MacBook Pro. So 220/200 write/read seams to be too slow for the R4. I made the AJA Speedtest and the results (read/weite) were higher. But I will repead the test this evening and post the exact results.

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Answer 6

Oct 31, 2011 12:19 PM in response to mrvoeg

Mrvoeg: Thanks

I think I am going to get a LaCie 1TB Thunderbolt Drive for $399 and use that as a boot drive instead of getting a SSD in my iMac. It would cost me about $350 for a 120GB SSD installed at a apple store and the write/read speed is about 180 on the LaCie drive so considering the extra storage that isn't a bad deal. When I have more money next year I plan to put the R4 in Raid 0 and get another R4 and use that for backup to the R4 in Raid 0. I need my stuff backed up. lol

I'm batching a ton of files right now but I will do another test. I know I'm over 75% full on the R4 in Raid 10. I will also check out that AJA test.

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Answer 7

mrvoeg Author

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Oct 31, 2011 12:50 PM in response to mrvoeg

Smphoto74: Before I purchased the R4 I wanted to buy the LaCie drive (and to use it as boot drive). I liked the idea of having a very fast portable drive. But the LaCie's fan seams to be realy loud (http://vimeo.com/29699883). That's the reason why I purchased the Pegasus R4.

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Answer 8

mrvoeg Author

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Oct 31, 2011 2:10 PM in response to mrvoeg

Smphoto74:

So here are the Benchmarks as promised. I tested the Raid with X Bench 1.3 and with AJA System Test 8.0:

X Bench 1.3:

System Info

Xbench Version 1.3

System Version 10.6.8 (10K549)

Physical RAM 8192 MB

Model MacBookPro8,2 Core i7 2,3Ghz

Drive Type Promise Pegasus R4, 8TB (Raid 5)

Disk Test

Sequential:

Uncached Write 1126.11 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 312.42 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 23.29 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 354.41 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Random:

Uncached Write 103.25 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 237.20 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 24.71 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 360.43 MB/sec [256K blocks]

AJA System Test 8.0

Frame Size 720 x 486 8-bit, File Size 4 GB: Read 227,5 MB/s Write 301MB/s

Frame Size 1920 x 1080 8-bit, File Size 4 GB: Read 365,8 MB/s, Write 446.6 MB/s

Frame Size 2048 x 1556 10-bit, File Size 4 GB: Read 337.2 MB/s, Write 444,7 MB/s

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Answer 9

Oct 31, 2011 2:42 PM in response to mrvoeg

Mrvoeg,

I appreciate you posting that information. Here is what I got with my setup.

X Bench 1.3:

Results 485.29

System Info

Xbench Version 1.3

System Version 10.7.2 (11C74)

Physical RAM 16384 MB

Model iMac12,2

Drive Type Promise Pegasus R4, 4TB Raid 10

Disk Test 485.29

Sequential 290.32

Uncached Write 1076.83 661.16 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 534.43 302.38 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 104.64 30.62 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 703.33 353.49 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Random 1477.57

Uncached Write 1021.43 108.13 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 970.43 310.67 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 4465.91 31.65 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 2110.82 391.68 MB/sec [256K blocks]

This is with just over 1.5TB used out of the available 2TB

Thanks again. I will post back again when I have my Lacie Drive up and running as a boot drive.

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Answer 10

mrvoeg Author

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Oct 31, 2011 2:56 PM in response to mrvoeg

Smphoto74,

Thank you, I'm very interested in your expeiences with the Lacie drive, because I need a fast drive for "working in the field". So I'm looking forward to your "tests".

PS. I also use the R4 a boot drive for Lion (just testing it). The R4 doesn't boot very fast (46 sec). But if the system is running, it seems as fast as my internal SSD.

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Answer 11

Oct 31, 2011 4:03 PM in response to mrvoeg

Mrvoeg,

That's what I've been reading about the LaCie Drives. If you look at www.bhphoto.com and do a search on LaCie thunderbolt Drive they have a 240GB SSD Thunderbolt drive listed for $899 and available sometime in Jan 2012. Speeds do not seem that great to me when you consider the R4 in Raid 0 getting the same speed.

Have you partitioned your R4 for different sizes or do you just have everything including lion on the one partition? Maybe I will just format the R4 into Raid 0 then install Lion on it. I don't really care much about boot times as my iMacs are on all the time but if you are getting great performance by having Lion on the R4 it should do wonders for me considering I only have the internal 7200rpm 1TB drive.

I still plan to get a LaCie Drive. The 180 write/read for $399 is pretty good and I will use it on my iMac. My main issue is the R4 is plugged into my other iMac so I'm limited to 100 write/read per the network from my iMac. I'm a photographer so the R4 is plugged into the iMac that does the most editing. I do a lot of editing my not the most. lol. I do use FCPX which I'm loving more and more and right now I only have my video work saved to a FireWire 800 drive.

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Answer 12

mrvoeg Author

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Oct 31, 2011 5:40 PM in response to mrvoeg

Smphoto74,

Well it's not easy to explain the usage of the R4. I'm just testing it at the moment. So for the instand I partitioned the R4. I'm using 500 Gb patition for testing Lion, 500 Gb to back up my Mac Book Pro (Time Machine) and 5 TB for the "rest" - video editing etc. I planned to by an iMac for video editing. But the new Mac Book Pro seems to be fast enough for me. So I ordered a Thunderbolt display and in future will use the Raid and the MacBook Pro for my personal video editing. And if you don't shoot on Red in 4.5 k or 5k, this configuration will be fast enough for editing. For my backups, I purchased a Synology NAS. That's slower, but the backups can be done at the night when I sleep 😉.

For professional video editing we use Mac Pros and SAS Raids (little bit to expensive for private use 😀). Normaly we shoot on Red, so we need faster machines than a Mac Book Pro and the R4 for editing. But to copy data "in the field" and to get a good first impression of what we shot the Mac Book Pro and the Lacie should be potable and fast solution. That's the reason why I'm so interested in the LaCie Drive. The SSD version is very interesting (and unforunatly very expensive, in average we have about 2 TB of data during a shooting).

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Answer 13

Oct 31, 2011 6:08 PM in response to mrvoeg

Mrvoeg,

Sweet. That's really helpful and I understands the setup.

What are you using to back up to the Synology NAS? My setup of course is R4 in Raid 10. So I have a backup there and I TM that to a WD 2TB HD so backups to TM drive are slow but not a big deal. Now that setup is my working files. I also keep a backup of the Raw files on 2TB drives stored off location just in case my house gets burned down. lol. I always keep those Raw backups and for final finished files I store on 2 - 2TB HD, one in house and one off location so no matter what the process is I have 3 HD with the data installed. Now if the house burnt down I would loose all my working files and put me 3 weeks behind but that would be the least of my problems if the house went up in smoke. Lol.

With using the R4 now, I'm just wanting to get it to Raid 0 and find a new backup system to the R4. I do have a WD 4TB HD that I could Raid 1 so it would hold 2 backups on that via TM but I might check into a Synology NAS.

I really like the iMacs although I wish they had USB 3.0. I brought 3 of them this year with mine being the i7 3.4ghz 2GB video card, 16GB ram but only the 1TB HD. The SSD just wasn't in the budget since I got 3 iMacs and a 13" MacBook pro. lol. I wish I had the SSD but at the time it wasn't possible.

I think a laCie drive would work well for you. The 2TB one is $499, pricey but is smaller than the R4...just what you need. The SSD one is over priced compared to speed and space of a R4 in Raid 0. If it was faster I could understand it but the price is over the top.

I only keep about 1.5TB of files on my working drive at one time. I like to rotate the files out when I'm done but them again I'm not dealing with video. My weddings are around 100-130GB(raw and edited). The FCPX is more for personal work although I do wedding slideshows and videos using FCPX. I'm trying hard to get my video friends to buy FCPX. lol.

My 3 iMacs do edit files on the R4 at any given time and I haven't had any issues with it. Pulling about 100 write and read across a wires network for the 2 iMacs and I've been told that is really good although I wish it was faster. lol.

Thanks for the info.

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Answer 14

mrvoeg Author

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Nov 1, 2011 2:37 AM in response to mrvoeg

Smphoto74,

At the moment, my NAS (it works perfectly with TM) is used as backup drive for my old, old, old 24" iMac and as media Station at the same time. It's a Raid 5 with 4x1TB 2.5 HDDs. I like it, because it's very small and very silent. On Raid 5, I have 2,7 TB free space, enough for music and fotos. But as I told, I'm going to replace the iMac by the combination of MacBook Pro and Thunderbolt Display. So in future the NAS will be used as one of two back up drives for my MacBook Pro (1xTM and 1x Cabon Copy Cloner).

And you are absolutly right, a SSD is a realy (too) expensive "turbo" at the moment. Especially if you order it with an iMac (or with more than one of these machines). Forunatly it is easy to change the HDD of a MacBook Pro, so you easily can choose a less expensive SSD - I got a Vertex II.

The first month I had to use the original 750GB HDD because the ordered SSD was out of stock 😟. Though the original HDD is okay, the speed with the SSD increased dramatically (booting, starting application etc.). But going back fom 750BG to 240GB is not easy. So I use the original HDD of my Mac Book Pro as external fire wire 800 drive.

For professional use, your way to back up your data is very safe. At the office we do back ups in a very similar way, but we use HDDs and LTO4 (save but slow and expensive) and store them at two different locations. Safe is safe 😀.

Using FCP X (I downloaded the trial version) is not easy for me. It seams to be very similar to iMovie HD. But I never used iMovie HD in my life. So working with FCP X will be something compleatly new for me. So I have to learn how to...

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Answer 15

Nov 1, 2011 3:31 AM in response to mrvoeg

Mrvoeg,

Ok, I've got to ask, what do you do for a job? I am a photographer. I've played with video programs for a long time. I didn't like FCPX at first but I didn't want to use my PC so I stuck it out and I encourage you to do the same. The more you use it the more you will love it. I have several videographer friends who use FCP 7?

I got to wait a couple of weeks because of my workload but I'm gonna raid 0 that R4 unit and throw Lion on there. I'm only using about 100GB on my 1TB HD. I think the one iMac is only using like 58GB. My entire workload is on the R4 unit. :).

I'm gonna check out that carbon copier for another Backup.

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