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Reliability of the Promise Pegasus R6 ... seeking opinions

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Matthew McGinity

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Hi Everyone,

I was just about to order a Promise Pegasus R6, when I stopped to ask the supplier what he thought of the product...

"Reliability is not so good since Promise do not use Enterprise certified SATA drives, but standard desktop drives, and so failures happen more often. But the worst detail is Promise support which is infamous, and I weigh my words. I do still have a pending Promise R6 issue since November 7th and still no RMA from them. They're truly not serious about the professional user with the Pegasus products..."
Click to expand...
Is this a fair criticism?
I would very much appreciate your opinions.

Can anyone suggest an alternative thunderbolt solution?
(My supplier is suggesting the Fusion DX800 instead, but it comes up at more than twice the price)

EDIT: I'm especially interested to hear anyone's experiences using the Pegasus under Windows.

regards,
Matt
 
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as far as thunderbolt goes there isn't many good options. 2 drive bays out by a few companies, lots of 1 bays. really not useful for our uses obviously. supposedly there are better solutions coming/out from certain firms. the 5D by Drobo is pretty sweet, comes empty, but the read write speeds aren't as good as the R6. probably if you can afford it hold out for a higher end solution from say maxx digital or some sort of stand alone server-esqu option with more bays or sas enterprise. all consumer drives suck is basically the problem, coupled with a firm that wants you to only use the drives they arrange as far as replacements go/originals and then needing to go through the process with them.

one of the issues i personally am having is i am not sure what my uses will be as far as space goes. was hoping to figure out what drives the r6's utilize and then swap out as my needs increase while buying new raids for my spares, etc. wish they'd just sell the empty enclosure, would probably fix both our needs if they did. they originally stated they would eventually sell it that way, so far i can't find them though.... :banghead:
 
i would reconsider the supplier.....
the pegasus is the best external solution, if you have thunderbolt....i don't think anyone would consider it a bargain or cheap solution...don't know about tech support....i have had 0 problems with mine, i have recommended it to everybody who asks and nobody i know has had any problems....if there was an issue with tech support it would be easy to dig up with a google search....
the pegasus array seems to be the simplest product in the promise line up, everything else looks way over my head.....
apple has recommended them since tb came out and i don't think they would team up with a sloppy manufacturer for their new technology....
as for HDs....as the saying goes, it is not question if, it is a question when they fail....i have had enterprise HDs fail just as much as regular ones and usually the physical replacement (under warranty or not) is the least of the issues...you can run the R6 as raid 5 with spare so theoretically 2 drives can fail at once....if you really have to run the box in your ATV while offroading.....
i highly recommend the pegasus and honestly thunderbolt is such a great connection, i just would not buy anything else anymore....superfast, simple (no pci card, no drivers, no extra boxes,...)...it just works.....
 
I have an R6 and couldn't be happier. I've dealt with Promise support and have had a great experience. My R6 was shipped across the coasts on a job (and NOT packaged correctly) and when I received it back in LA the enclosure was noticeably dented. Unfortunately one of the drive bays was now toast and would not recognize any drives installed. Because my R6 was still under warranty Promise promptly issued me an RMA and I shipped just the enclosure back to them in Northern Cali. Less than two weeks later I received a brand new R6 enclosure and all has been well since. They were fast, responsive, and even followed up with me after I received my new enclosure.

I like their product.
 
We have over 1500 hours of readtime on our Pegasus - feeding RAW 3D HD-SDI to an encoder. Never had a hiccup or dropped frame. Also, has 100 hours of high-speed write on it (dual HD-SDI capture) with zero problems. It just works.
 
really appreciate the link, i'm sold assuming those speed tests (coming soon) say its as fast or faster then an r6. i keep trying to hold out for the new mac pro to use internals with my r3d files, but at this rate i think i might just buy this enclosure. can it hook it to a macbook pro or something that doesn't have a pci slot available? to apple pci slots are like dinosaurs or something these days...


Matthew McGinity said:
I see these:

USA $1500 : http://www.cineraid.com/products/FIT_CR8050.htm
UK starts around 960GBP here: http://www.rentaraid.co.uk/areca-arc-8050-thunderbolt-to-6gb-s-sas-raid-storage.html
and here: http://www.span.com/product/Areca-Thunderbolt-RAID-Enclosure-ARC-8050-8-Bay,-RAID-0-1-5-6~39339
Click to expand...
 
right, but some of us want empty options, and like that it has 8 bays... cuz you can have 32tb in that one enclosure... i am all set to buy promise but they don't ship empty, and if this thing doesn't require a pci card and has 8 bays instead of 6, that is a way better deal. i mean just buy the drives bulk and pop em in, its much cheaper per gb to do that with enclosures... at least typically

which is partially why i have been so pissed off trying to find a cheap empty large thunderbolt enclosure with lots of bays... because promise is a lot per gb, was hoping for a better deal by doing it myself when it came to swapping. also hoping thunderbolt would catch on, more options in general for fast 4k storage
 
Promise uses Hitachi drives with tweaked or semi-custom firmware. Their part numbers are neither "consumer" or "enterprise". The difference between the "consumer" and the "enterprise" drives is all firmware based, hardware is identical. ...That and they charge a premium for the extra warranty. The typical firmware differences are usually that the enterprise drives have shorter time-out periods which helps in high-demand situations and RAID installations. They typically have different approaches to cacheing data.

So, if you have a drive fail in one of the Promise units, it's best to replace it with one of their drive modules under warranty as it will match up with the other drives in the unit. If it's not under warranty anymore, you can still go the official route. Or you can yank all the drives after a failure and replace with appropriate drives that have RAID-specific firmware like the Hitachi UltraStars or WD REx series.

That said, the Promise units are great. I have two of the R6 RAIDs, both with 2TB drives. I have had one drive fail in one of the two units just recently -- this unit is nearly a year old. Promise replaced the drive promptly and the RAID system handled the rebuild like a champ. Overall very nice RAID units for the money. I wish they were built more rugged so they could be used on a cart or in the field. For general desktop workstation use they are great. ProMAX, Areca and others are offering Thunderbolt RAID systems now. The Areca one looks intriguing, but I don't know how rugged it is. The ProMAX one seems nice, but I haven't personally used it, just ogled it at NAB... It's in a heavier Aluminum enclosure, similar to the units from MAXX Digital or a Mac Pro. But when it all comes down to it, the fragile parts in these units are the drives themselves and they all use the same hard drives to a certain degree.
 
First, thanks for the replies.

I would not hesitate to go with the Pegasus, but for two reasons:

a) I work between France and Germany. If a drive fails, and I can only replace it with a drive from Promise, how long may I have to wait to get a replacement drive?
To avoid any downtime, is it possible to buy extra drives from Promise?

b) I need it to work with Windows and Mac. There are dozens of articles, benchmarks and videos on the web showing it working, and working well, with Windows. eg. here or here. In this video, one of Promise's own employees discusses Pegasus on windows.

Yet, when I emailed Promise, they replied "As of now Pegasus is compatible only with MAC system. Probably in Futures Promise may support."

So I'm in a bind.
My guess is that it does work fine with Windows, but you have to take great care with how it cooperates with other thunderbolt devices and drivers. Even in Mac land it sounds like it's not as plug and play as one would hope (problems with audio, for example).

I think all I need is just one person to tell me they have it working well under windows.

Matt
 
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Just received a slightly more informative reply from Promise regarding Windows:

"Promise is currently working a Window driver for the pegasus unit. At this point we only have a beta driver which has not been release as of yet."
Click to expand...
 
Joe Pontecorvo said:
Jeff, Did WD acquire Hatachi or did that not happen?
Click to expand...

Didn't happen.

Matthew McGinity said:
First, thanks for the replies.

I would not hesitate to go with the Pegasus, but for two reasons:

a) I work between France and Germany. If a drive fails, and I can only replace it with a drive from Promise, how long may I have to wait to get a replacement drive?
To avoid any downtime, is it possible to buy extra drives from Promise?

b) I need it to work with Windows and Mac. There are dozens of articles, benchmarks and videos on the web showing it working, and working well, with Windows. eg. here or here. In this video, one of Promise's own employees discusses Pegasus on windows.

Yet, when I emailed Promise, they replied "As of now Pegasus is compatible only with MAC system. Probably in Futures Promise may support."

So I'm in a bind.
My guess is that it does work fine with Windows, but you have to take great care with how it cooperates with other thunderbolt devices and drivers. Even in Mac land it sounds like it's not as plug and play as one would hope (problems with audio, for example).

I think all I need is just one person to tell me they have it working well under windows.

Matt
Click to expand...


If you're working between two countries and regularly where you may not be able to have parts shipped to you, that can be a problem for *ANY* RAID. If something happens and you need to match a drive in a RAID, you may not be able to find one or get one delivered to where you are in time. For all my critical RAIDs in the field or in the datacenter my IT company manages, where every minute counts, we keep spare drives on hand. It is possible to buy extra drives from Promise. If you are traveling a lot with the RAID, the Pegasus may not be the most ideal solution as it's just not built as rugged as some of the others. For transporting it, you will be fine if you pack it properly in its original box or have a case for it.

Windows support is coming. It's not a "driver", but the management software -- or the Pegasus version of the "Promise Utility" for Windows. If you plug the Pegasus into a Windows system with Thunderbolt it works just fine right now! There is just no way to monitor, manage or configure the system in Windows until that software is available though. I have myself connected a Pegasus unit to a Windows system (ASUS motherboard w/ TB port) and it worked just fine. That said, I would not recommend it or use it with Windows until Promise releases their software. If you dual-boot Windows and OSX on the same system, you can always do the management and configuration in OSX. Although, while using utilities like MacDrive in Windows to access the data works great on individual drives, I've always been a bit leery of third-party filesystem implementations on more critical RAID volumes. Maybe I'm over-cautious or even paranoid, but I have experienced data corruption in the past. So if I were running separate systems, I would give them their own RAIDs. If I were using Windows and OSX on the same system and using the same RAID, that's fine, but I would most likely make a separate RAID slice / partition for use in each OS.

I personally have had no issues with any of my Thunderbolt devices on any of my systems <knock wood>, but there have been a few driver hiccups along the way. Can't deny that... And it's typical of most new peripheral standards. It took USB3 nearly 2 years to become almost usable and another almost 2 years to reach the point it's at now and it still has compatibility issues across the industry.
 
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Aside form this donkey...
http://swimminginthought.com/promise-pegasys-r6r4-on-windows-bootcamp-solved/
...who seems to have the R6 running on Windows but charges for the knowledge as an ebook, anyone had any luck with a boot camp Mac? Clearly this is all unsupported and possibly on the very edge of functionality - until Promise comes out with an official driver.

Strikes me as funny that Jeff Kilgroe managed to get it working on an ASUS MB but both a MacBook Air and Retina MacBook Pro seem to fail at the task. I get an unknown "RAID Controller" in device preferences. Other TB devices seem to work but not the Promise.
 
Ummm... Not sure what issues you're having with the Promise specifically, but there is no RAID driver for the unit. I can just plug them into a Mac and they come right up. Only software to download is the Promise Utility, which is the management software.

So you're saying you can't use your Pegasus on a Macbook Air and a Retina MBP? If that's the case, perhaps you have a faulty Pegasus unit? I've pulled new Macs out of the box and have done fresh installs of OSX, Pegasus works just fine whether or not I've downloaded and run the Promise utility software. Outside of one failed drive, quickly swapped by Promise, my two Pegasus units have been trouble free. I do have one annoyance with one of my units though. It sometimes doesn't wake up properly if the system it's connected to is cold-started. I'll occasionally have to pull the power cord and plug it back in. You can tell it doesn't start up right because you don't hear the drives spin up. Do that to spin up the drives and then log on to the Mac and there it is. I've had that problem from day-1 on my first Pegasus unit, but not the second. Promise has never offered a solution, although they have told me they have duplicated the issue and are aware of it.

You can't effectively use a Pegasus on Windows yet. You can kinda set it up on a Mac and then plug it into a Windows box and format your volume(s) and go from there. But it's just not a great solution at the moment. I haven't done enough playing around with that to really see if it's even completely reliable, but it seemed to work. Windows still needs quite a bit of work on its own Thunderbolt drivers and support -- very flaky at the moment.
 
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