Two Thunderbolt Displays with Promise Pegasus R6

I just dont get it.... I have contacted Apple, Promise, Blackmagic. Posted on other forums. Non of the manufactures seem to even care. I for one, think this is a huge crippling problem for thunderbolt.

Bottom line is they say that you can plug up to six devices into the chain. However, if you do you speed with slow to nothing. I am very ****** that I have spent so much money on all this thunderbolt gear and now it doesnt work. Hate to complain. But Im getting really tired with the lack of results and communication.

I feel like this is a possible class action suit. They advertise something but it blatently doesnt work.

I'm very disappointed as well. I purchased a mac mini, a thunderbolt display and an pegaus R4. I spent a small fortune and I can't listen to any music and can't make Lync calls.

Let's see do I get rid of my $1000 thunderbolt display or my $1600 pegasus?

I think we just need to keep bringing it to their attention any way we can. I hope more people can email in and call about this issue.

Thanks Chakravarthy. Hopefully they can fix this soon. It is crippling my work flow.

Just got this from Promise

"Response By:- Jerry Case 20th March 2012 at 12:11

We've recreated the issue, but so far no root cause is found. It may be a Promise issue but until root cause is determined, it may be related to Thunderbolt chip set, cable, or the Mac. Closing this case pending solution."

I have the latest MBP 17" decked out. I got the thunderbolt display. I also Purchased the Pegasus 15 TB. I have my MBP going to the display. The display is connected to Pegasus. Ethernet to the display. I have Verison FioS with maxed out speed. I'm a speed junky, need a 12 step group to stop this expensive addiction.

Observations:

#1 - speeds are all over the place. Sometimes the transfer rate between the computer and Pegasus during TM backup can be so fast or so slow. Odd the discrepancies.

#2 - I just did a 174 gb file transfer from my MBP to Pegasus. File to file. took almost 4 hours. I was expecting a much faster transfer rate. Thoughts?

#3 - I upgraded the promise utility a couple of days ago. Got a warning immediately that the backplane was over the threshold. Didn't have that warning pre-update.

I turned in a report to Promise secondary to the heat issue with the backplane. The stated threshold on the updated utilitiy I installed a couple of days ago is 113 degrees F. I am staying around 118-120 degrees. I turned on two fans just in case this is a real issue. I also wonder if this is the normal operating temperature and perhaps the threshold was lowered in the new utility download? Maybe a sensor calibration issue of some sort? Is 120 degrees reasonable to some of you tech folks who might understand RAID setups?

I turned in a request, got an immediate response for various terminal exec files. Did all 7 or 8 files for them, sent them back to Promise, waiting to hear from them. I'll post my response when I hear back from them.

My house is cool and I have two fans on the Pegasus just in case. The hotest thing in this house is the battery pack on my left knee from the MBP! If only Apple could solve that issue...

#4 - I haven't had audio problems until tonight. I was transferring through ethernet from my G5 to the Pegasus. As I'm moving over from my G5 (which I LOVED) to the laptop, I'm coming up against what are probably usual issues: primarily storage. Wow. I got Verizon to come in and wire the house for Cat6 cable outlets for all rooms. Got their fastest up/down package (do photography). I decided tonight would be a good night to start moving files from the G5, like iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie, etc to the Pegasus.

I have the best fastest ethernet hub I could get, best cables. Overall, the transfer speed wasn't bad considering. But then I decided to put on the new disc called Flying Colors. Choppy. Not even able to make out the songs. I dropped audio real quick. Not sure why moving files across Ethernet through the TB display would interfere with sound. The sound was originating from iTunes on my MBP, so I figured they would not interfere with each other. I suppose I need to call Apple and ask about audio issues with TB display.

Overall, I feel the TB setup has promise. I suppose these are all kinks being worked out in real world scenarios. As long as Apple and Promise keep improving, responding, and resolving, I can be OK with all this as normal growth pains.

No responses or poor responses and such a promising technology will be shunned by the core group. Apple and Promise (et al) better listen up and get it in gear.

I agree. The problem is that I dont feel that Apple nor Promise are responding. Promise basically told me they havent figured out what the problem is and my case is closed. Not impressed. There isnt even another raid to test yet. How much longer are we going to have to wait for this problem to be fixed. My guess is forever. I am willing to bet they cant fix it. The dual monitors take up too much bandwidth and I am willing to bet there is nothing they can do about it. Hopefully the next MBP will have dual thunderbolt ports. but I doubt it. I am really disappointed in thunderbolt so far.

Just wanted to join the fray and see if my situation can help shed any light.

I'm a video editor, and I have a 2011 17" 2.2 GHz i7 MacBook Pro with 16 GB RAM which drives two Thunderbolt displays and a Matrox Mini MXO2 video breakout box, also connected via Thunderbolt so I can run an HDMI monitor for clients. Up until a month ago, I've been running FCP 7, After Effects, Avid, etc on my system with no problems; both screens looked and performed amazingly and my machine, although getting a little older now, worked flawlessly. The problem is, with new video projects having increasingly demanding specs (increased resolutions, higher bit rate compressions, etc) I noticed my eSata RAID enclosure was starting to bottleneck me. So I decided to look into upgrading myself to a Thunderbolt storage solution for hopes of taking advantage of the breakneck speeds, and also to future proof myself for a while. Instead of going for a Pegasus, I eventually decided to go with the Areca ARC-8050, an 8 bay Thunderbolt RAID enclosure that would allow me to bring my own hard drives to the party.

So I filled the thing with 3TB drives, set it up for RAID 6, leaving me with 18TB of useable space and set off to speed testing. I ran the Blackbagic Disk Speed Test and was not met with the amazing results I'd expected.

DUAL THUNDERBOLT DISPLAY TEST SETUP:

Total Thunderbolt Devices: 4

Chain order: MacBook Pro > TB Display 1 > TB Display 2 > ARC-8050 Enclosure > Matrox MX02 Mini

Results: 240 MBs Write & 300 MBs Read

While this was still a significant boost from my old eSata setup, I wasn't getting the near-SSD speeds I was seeing in benchmarks I had found online. So I scratched my head a bit, did some searching and stumbled upon an article claiming dual thunderbolt displays can cause a significant performance hit to a single Thunderbolt chain. GULP. Needless to say I was pretty disappointed with what I was reading, I'd just put a good $4,000 into building this Thunderbolt-heavy system, not counting my MacBook Pro itself. Here I am with only 4 devices on this Thunderbolt chain, which is spec'd out for 6, yet I'm maxing it out!? Here's the article in case you wanted to take a look: http://www.fcp.co/hardware-and-software/pro/715-does-thunderbolt-slow-down-when- daisy-chained-with-an-extra-display

So I went ahead and took one of my Thunderbolt displays out of the equation and tested the whole thing again. Sure enough my drive's performance nearly doubled! These were the kind of numbers I had expected.

SINGLE THUNDERBOLT DISPLAY TEST SETUP:

Total Thunderbolt Devices: 3

Chain order: MacBook Pro > TB Display 1 > ARC-8050 Enclosure > Matrox MX02 Mini

Results: 594 MBs Write & 467 MBs Read

What's most puzzling is that while the original dual display setup only yields 240 Read / 300 Write (which is still considerably faster than my old eSata drive could manage) real world performance in FCP and AVID is drastically worse than it had been with my eSata solution. I can't edit at all with both Thunderbolt displays in use, even with very low bitrate content - the footage just sputters chopily as if I'm taxing a 2006 machine with a 5200rpm drive. I've essentially bought and built a state of the art system that functions worse than any old one I've ever used!

So in closing, I'm not sure if this is a problem specific to you all with Pegasus drives, but instead a problem with the Thunderbolt technology / Apple's displays / or the way Apple is marketing Thunderbolt as an all-in-one solution for professionals. These Thunderbolt displays apparently suck up so much bandwidth to drive their 2560x1440 resolutions that my laptop's single bus can't even come close to supporting the 6 devices it's supposed to. At this point I've pretty much resigned to hoping that the new Mac Pro, with it's multiple busses of Thunderbolt 2 ports, will be my saving grace. While I wouldn't trust the claim that it can handle 36 devices via Thunderbolt, I'm hopefull it can handle the measely 4 I need!

I'm crossing my fingers that someone will come up with a firmware/software fix, but at this point I'm guessing I spent $4,000 onlly to learn that I need to drop another $4 or $5 grand when the Mac Pro comes out!

Hi there,

It is quite some months later now and I can add some interesting info to the thread I think.

I connected a thunderbolt display to my MBP 15" Retina. On the back side of the display I connected a USB Apogee Duet 2, an external keyboard, a UTP cable for internet connectivity and a firewire 800 drive and another Thunderbolt display.

On the second display I tried to connect the Pegasus2 R6. Immediately I also got the same trouble when writing and reading to/from the diskunit. I also connected another firewire drive to the second display. Writing and reading to and from this disk is no problem at all.

When I connect the R6 to the second port of my MBP, the trouble is over. I also tried connecting it all to one display ruling out the second display. This also brings trouble in sound and non-responsive keyboard and mouse.

There must be a serious problem with the thunderbolt chipset on the thunderbolt displays.

My workaround is to connect the R6 directly to the MBP. This works for me for now.

Apple needs to be aware of the Microsoft Syndrome. Being succesful is more then just delivering stock value. As a company you should really take care of delivering on the promise you make or otherwise be serious on support and let people return their products.

For me Apple still makes the best computer stuff in the world but they do remind me of the earlier days of Microsoft. It would be a real pitty if Apple'd downgrade on their focus on end user experience.

Regards,

Marc