Promise Pegasus R6 & Mac Thunderbolt Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 8, 2011 2:01 AM ESTIt's Bootable
With the Thunderbolt firmware update installed on your MacBook Pro or iMac, the Promise Pegasus is a bootable device. You can install OS X to it and select it as a boot device either at startup (hold down option) or through OS X's Startup Disk preference pane:
I would still recommend using a single SSD to boot from. Even in a 6-drive RAID-0 configuration you get much better small file random read/write performance from a single SSD. As a result you get better boot and application launch times. Although sequential performance is far better on the Promise array.
Power, Thermals & Noise
With six 3.5" 7200RPM drives inside, the Pegasus R6 consumes a decent amount of power. At idle a fully configured R6 draws around 64W of power at the wall. Under maximum load I saw just under 70W on our power meter.
| Power Consumption Comparison | |||||
| Idle | Sequential Write | Random Write | |||
| Promise Pegasus R6 (6 x 2TB RAID-5) | 64.3W | 69.1W | 68.1W | ||
The single 100mm fan tasked with cooling all six drives does a good job. Even after writing 10TB of data to the RAID-5 array for nearly 8 hours the highest temperature of any drive in the Pegasus was 45C. Under load the drives tend to stay in the 41 - 45C range and the fan likes to spin at 1200 RPM.
The fans are the loudest part of the Pegasus R6. While you can hear the 7K3000s spin up, random and sequential accesses are typically quiet. The noise level at my desk is around 43dB, with the Pegasus R6 running it peaks at 48dB with all of the drives crunching and idles at 47dB. The Pegasus is by no means silent - it definitely adds low fan noise to your environment.
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PrincessNybor - Tuesday, July 12, 2011 - link
I'm actually looking forward to using Target Display Mode when I pick up my new 27" iMac this month (just holding out for Lion). My work computer is a 15" MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt, and while the display is good for a portable, I'd love access to a 27" display! Some of the applications I work with won't be installed on the iMac, since that will be a personal desktop and not a work machine. This is a good solution for others in my situation.osteopathic1 - Thursday, July 14, 2011 - link
I just plugged in my old 23" Cinema Display DVI into a $6 minidisplay port/DVI adapter and it worked like a charm.onebear - Saturday, September 24, 2011 - link
Please see this discussions from Apple Support forum.https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3181015
It is not working with iMac 2011. And having many unsolve issues.
nanofunk.net - Saturday, January 7, 2012 - link
there are lots of known problems and promise won't answer or react on any of them.see a roundup of problems here:
http://www.nanofunk.net/caution-with-promise-pegas...
also there are other issues as reported in the apple forums:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3181015?start...
the only thing we can currently do is to boycott promise until the give an official statement and release a bugfix to support larger HDDs and address the issues/bugs (drive-ejecting bugs, etc.)
Rdubs - Friday, April 20, 2012 - link
Anyone know if I can throw in 4x 4tb 3rd party drives into a R4?What's the limit? Can't find a list of what mfg' s hard drives play well
with R4.
Many thanks
frabber - Thursday, October 25, 2012 - link
anybody know whether this is possible? with some kind of thunderbolt enabled motherboard?odedia - Monday, April 14, 2014 - link
WD RED 4TB drives are pretty affordable now, for the price of the 8Tb R4, I can get a diskless R4 and 4 red drives, resulting in 16tb total. They question is, would the RED drives match the performance of the R4? They are 5400 rpm drives, though quite reliable (much better than a green drive).badex - Thursday, December 31, 2015 - link
Hi,Have had my pegasus R4 for a couple of years. its been effective but i think i'd like to take a step up to using SSD drives. what SSD drives would you recommend for the pegasus R4?
thanks