anyone try runing 3 or 4tb drives in a promise r6 yet?

[Brian Merlen]

so before i pry one open and replace all the drives needlessly i was trying to see had any of my fellow redusers tried this yet?....would love it if i could throw 6 4tb drives in one....

basically id like to have one huge raid with a small foot print running with a new mbp for mobility purposes. so i want 20tb's or more using thunderbolt or usb3 without needing to stipe drives with TB (unless i have to).... that's the goal at least. i want this to comfortably fit in a backpack....so i cant get a huge server, i want something mobile as heck....


thanks for your thoughts...

 

[Jarek Zabczynski]

I've heard people having issues doing this. While some managed to get it to work, according to Promise it only supports up to 2TB drives. My guess is a firmware issue. Personally, I wouldn't try it until Promise officially supports larger drives.

 

[Brian Merlen]

any usb 3/thunderbolt options for 24tb+ that are small? i dont care what brand just mobility is key

 

[Harrison Diamond]

I don't know what issues others have but I'm using an R6 with Hitachi 7K3000 3TB and 7K4000 4TB drives in RAID 1E and RAID 5 respectively. The R6 comes with Hitachi 7K1000.C or 7K3000 drives from Promise so I'm guessing any issues may be related to using non-Hitachi drives?

 

[Brian Merlen]

Thanks for the 411 Harrison, looking forward to voiding my warranty and trying this myself! I wish they'd just sell me an empty bay...Weren't they supposed to come to market with an empty enclosure at some point?

 

[Kwan Khan]

any usb 3/thunderbolt options for 24tb+ that are small? i dont care what brand just mobility is key

@ Brain, Your Solution
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/RAID/Rack_Mount/FireWire_USB3_eSATA_1U

Video;
http://www.youtube.com/embed/GU8DsSsdpRE?rel=0&wmode=transparent

 

[Brian Merlen]

Yeah I took a look at that one, its nice, but I wish it had a couple more bays...i'd like to have at least 24tb's for mobile use if I could...

 

[Harrison Diamond]

Can't imagine it voiding the warranty...just hold on to the old drives just in case. There's nothing stopping you from using different drives. No warranty stickers. Standard type of sliding trays.

 

[Brian Merlen]

Technically according to their legal jargon I am not allowed to open it up (the R6). If a drive fails they seriously want you to send the raid in instead of replacing it yourself... I was on the phone with their IT department talking about the situation with them. They didn't recommend I try this. Apple agrees I shouldn't do this too...

but to hell with them all, right lol?

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

According to the Promise guys at NAB '11, NAB '12 and in the original Pegasus Thunderbolt press release, they were also going to sell the units without drives so people could add their own. That has yet to happen.

I have an R6 12TB and it's been great, but haven't had a need to open it. I personally don't feel it's rugged enough for mobile or field use, but the current selection of Thunderbolt storage out there is really lacking. At NAB, G-Tech said they were going to have a Thunderbolt version of their G-Speed ES Pro, but it has yet to materialize, even in official announcement form. All they have done is announce the smaller units with 2 drives in them. And they're way overpriced, IMO.

If you already have an R6 and it's working fine, before pulling drives to swap, why not just buy another and chain the two together? Most of your bigger / better RAID manufacturers are not offering 3TB drives. The performance suffers in light of the additional platters and heads to get the capacity up. 4TB drives are even worse in that way and no one is shipping a "RAID" or "enterprise" class 4TB yet. Initial reliability reports for the 4TB units, regardless of manufacturer, have been pretty dismal... I wouldn't want them right now myself...

 

[Michael Lindsay]

At NAB, G-Tech said they were going to have a Thunderbolt version of their G-Speed ES Pro, but it has yet to materialize, even in official announcement form. All they have done is announce the smaller units with 2 drives in them. And they're way overpriced, IMO.

I heard from one good source that the problem in the market is/was the agrressive price of the initial Promise units. This, suposedly, ment there was far less insentive to race (which is expensive) to compete directly ...

Michael

 

[Tony Lorentzen]

4TB drives are even worse in that way and no one is shipping a "RAID" or "enterprise" class 4TB yet. Initial reliability reports for the 4TB units, regardless of manufacturer, have been pretty dismal... I wouldn't want them right now myself...

Not entirely the case. CalDigit's new VR2 is a 2-bay RAID storage that comes in an 8TB version with around 330MB/sec (what they say!).

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Not entirely the case. CalDigit's new VR2 is a 2-bay RAID storage that comes in an 8TB version with around 330MB/sec (what they say!).

Yes, and G-Tech has a 2-drive 8TB model coming any day now too. But they're using consumer drives and while I love both CalDigit and G-Tech, I've had my share of problems with their "cheaper" hardware. I stick by those two companies because they have excellent customer support, even when they do release a dud product.

I don't see anyone using those new 4TB drives in anything bigger than a 2-drive config. They don't have the performance or reputation to justify their use just yet.

 

[Paul Ellington]

I heard from one good source that the problem in the market is/was the agrressive price of the initial Promise units. This, suposedly, ment there was far less insentive to race (which is expensive) to compete directly ...

Michael

Yeah they tried to up the price on me mid delivery on an R6 while I already plopped down more than the deposit called for. Crazy. Then they delayed it hoping I would cancel the order. It was strange but I love Promise, and Maxx Digital Drives are amazing great service.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Pricing on the Promise units going up wasn't entirely their fault, it coincided with the HDD makers ramping up prices and citing the flooding in Thailand as an excuse. B&H has the 12TB R6 for $2145 w/ free shipping right now and that's the best deal I know of out there. Unfortunately, It's still about $225 more than what I paid for mine when they were first released....

 

[James Peach]

I have a R6 12TB. There tech people told me 2 R4s in raid 0 would be faster then 1 R6. So I got 2 and they were wrong did not work any faster then just one.
They did get me to some one better I hope. He told me if I did all SSDs it would be faster and that would not void the warranty on the unit.
I did ask about 3TB & 4TB they told me it would work buy I would not do it any way. I will stick to enterprise HDDS from hitachi or seagate enterprise.
Now hitachi is a Western Digital company hope they don't mess it up.
Trying seagate's thunderbolt desk top dock seems nice. I used 2 3TB raid 0 in disk utility and it more then doubled the speed vs just one.
Same idea and way LaCie does it with the Little Big Disk. Chain them together, the higher performance you get.

Now I am looking at 6G SAS Expander.
there are 4bay 8bay and big 16bay.
An idea would be when you don't need to be mobile use a 16 or more bay and use a express thunderbolt pcie expansion chassis with a SAS card.
For a iMac or macbook pro.
In less the mac pro is up dated and can really out do a iMac.
Still SAS can do more then thunderbolt.

 

[Jarek Zabczynski]

Yes, and G-Tech has a 2-drive 8TB model coming any day now too. But they're using consumer drives and while I love both CalDigit and G-Tech, I've had my share of problems with their "cheaper" hardware. I stick by those two companies because they have excellent customer support, even when they do release a dud product.

I don't see anyone using those new 4TB drives in anything bigger than a 2-drive config. They don't have the performance or reputation to justify their use just yet.

G-Tech had a "Now with enterprise drives" sticker on their images. Did they change that?

They seem to be using 4TB drives in the OWC raids now. For a while only the 5400rpm. Now all 7200rpm though.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/RAID/Desktop/

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/RAID/Rack_Mount/FireWire_USB3_eSATA_1U

 

[Paul Ellington]

Pricing on the Promise units going up wasn't entirely their fault, it coincided with the HDD makers ramping up prices and citing the flooding in Thailand as an excuse. B&H has the 12TB R6 for $2145 w/ free shipping right now and that's the best deal I know of out there. Unfortunately, It's still about $225 more than what I paid for mine when they were first released....

To give you an idea - I wound up paying what they quoted me, 1750 USD> so you can see why this smells a little funny since the flooding is all but gone. Have their drives not dried up yet? Or are they just going to keep priced pat because well, they figured out they underpriced themselves. Not a very nice thing to do.

-E

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

G-Tech had a "Now with enterprise drives" sticker on their images. Did they change that?

Don't know... But the "enterprise" class of the 3TB Hitachi drives have been all but non-existent. They have not announced, let alone shipped, any 4TB "enterprise" class drives. But G-Tech is unique in a way as they are owned by Hitachi and often tend to get new drive offerings before the rest of the market. Last I saw the "enterprise" banner, it seemed the fine print indicated it was only for configs using 2TB and smaller HDDs.

To give you an idea - I wound up paying what they quoted me, 1750 USD> so you can see why this smells a little funny since the flooding is all but gone. Have their drives not dried up yet? Or are they just going to keep priced pat because well, they figured out they underpriced themselves. Not a very nice thing to do.

Doesn't just smell funny, it smells like complete BS. I think it's really crappy that Promise tried to raise the price on you and screw with the order (as I'm assuming you ordered direct from them?). As for the whole HDD shortage thing, it's a pile of steaming BS. HDD makers have jacked up prices nearly a year ago and keep hiding behind the excuse of the Thai flooding. Which actually didn't affect any supply in the market other than a few select models and warehouse stock. HDD makers control the pricing, Promise buys from them like any other integrator or PC vendor. Large customers like Apple, HP, Dell, etc.. never really altered HDD pricing through all this. The Asian markets never fluctuated pricing. And yet North American and Euro markets did and we get excuses over shortages. And even some distributors trying to restrict purchase quantities, but yet there hasn't been any real identifiable shortages so to speak and while the drives have been harder to get here in the states for end users, that seems to be the extent of it. IMO, the whole thing is a complete scam. Especially now that everything has returned to normal "over there" and yet pricing hasn't fallen back down to prior levels.

I think another factor in this is the SSD market. SSD storage is placing increased pressure on HDD makers and the only two factors that HDD makers have in their favor at this point is the pricing and capacity. They're about to lose the capacity advantage within the next 12 to 18 months, so it seems they're going to push the prices up while they can. As long as SSDs are still 3 to 5 X more expensive per GB, they can still pretend HDDs are a bargain. People are fickle and will soon forget that a 1TB HDD used to be $55.

 

[Paul Ellington]

Don't know... But the "enterprise" class of the 3TB Hitachi drives have been all but non-existent. They have not announced, let alone shipped, any 4TB "enterprise" class drives. But G-Tech is unique in a way as they are owned by Hitachi and often tend to get new drive offerings before the rest of the market. Last I saw the "enterprise" banner, it seemed the fine print indicated it was only for configs using 2TB and smaller HDDs.



Doesn't just smell funny, it smells like complete BS. I think it's really crappy that Promise tried to raise the price on you and screw with the order (as I'm assuming you ordered direct from them?). As for the whole HDD shortage thing, it's a pile of steaming BS. HDD makers have jacked up prices nearly a year ago and keep hiding behind the excuse of the Thai flooding. Which actually didn't affect any supply in the market other than a few select models and warehouse stock. HDD makers control the pricing, Promise buys from them like any other integrator or PC vendor. Large customers like Apple, HP, Dell, etc.. never really altered HDD pricing through all this. The Asian markets never fluctuated pricing. And yet North American and Euro markets did and we get excuses over shortages. And even some distributors trying to restrict purchase quantities, but yet there hasn't been any real identifiable shortages so to speak and while the drives have been harder to get here in the states for end users, that seems to be the extent of it. IMO, the whole thing is a complete scam. Especially now that everything has returned to normal "over there" and yet pricing hasn't fallen back down to prior levels.

I think another factor in this is the SSD market. SSD storage is placing increased pressure on HDD makers and the only two factors that HDD makers have in their favor at this point is the pricing and capacity. They're about to lose the capacity advantage within the next 12 to 18 months, so it seems they're going to push the prices up while they can. As long as SSDs are still 3 to 5 X more expensive per GB, they can still pretend HDDs are a bargain. People are fickle and will soon forget that a 1TB HDD used to be $55.

You kind Sir, are correct, in the middle of an order from them. Yes, you are much nicer and stated what I could not much better with far fewer curse-words than I did, and would. Promise is great yet they are actually not maximizing their earning potential because they are stubborn. Oh 'EFF!' Well!