Promise Pegasus2 M4 (4x1TB) Thunderbolt 2 DAS Review
by Kristian Vättö on September 12, 2014 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- Thunderbolt
- m4
- Promise
- DAS
- Thunderbolt 2
- Pegasus2
Final Words
It is clear that the Pegasus2 M4 is a niche product. Any user that does not require portability will be better served by the R4, which is a similar 4-bay Thunderbolt 2 device but with 3.5" hard drives instead of 2.5" drives. As a result it is physically larger but should provide better performance since 3.5" hard drives tend to be faster than their 2.5" siblings. We have not tested the new R4, but we did test the original R6 when it was released and the performance was better than what the M4 offers. The R4 is also more cost efficient and it retails for $1,499 at the Apple Online Store, but that includes 8TB of data so that works out to be $187.50 per terabyte whereas the M4 costs $250 per terabyte.
Furthermore, a single 3.5" external hard drive can beat the M4 in capacity while costing a fraction of the M4's price, and it provides the same or even higher level of portability. That leaves redundancy and performance as the M4's advantages. Since the M4 supports RAID 5 and RAID 6, it can withstand one or two hard drive failures without losing any user data. The performance is also much better than what you can get from single 3.5" drives, which usually max out at around 200MB/s, whereas the M4 manages over 350MB/s in RAID 5 configuration.
I did notice one irritating thing in the M4, however. The fan in the M4 makes a fairly loud noise even when the device is idling. Unfortunately I do not have a proper decibel meter to provide an objective measure of the noise, but WebPAM PRO showed the fan speed to be 2,400rpm, which certainly sounds high. I would not say the noise is too loud to distract me while working, but it is clearly distinguishable over the noise that the three desktops in my office create.
Another thing I have a slight problem with is the lack of additional capacity points. 4TB is not much for a video professional, especially if 4K video is being stored, and 1.5TB and 2TB 2.5" 9.5mm hard drives are not that expensive anymore. A 2TB 2.5" 9.5mm hard drive costs $127 online while a similar 1TB drive costs $65, so the price is exactly double. It is understandable that Promise must have high margins because these are not mainstream products that sell in high volumes and thus I can see the cost sensitivity issue with higher capacities, but a 4x2TB configuration at $1,499 would still leave Promise with a ~50% margin on the hard drives.
All in all, the M4 targets a fairly small niche. I can only think of video professionals (maybe photo and audio to some extent) that would see the value in the M4 because if you do not need portability, redundancy, and high performance, there are better options in the market. However, if you need all three (e.g. for on-set video editing), the M4 does the job.
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repoman27 - Monday, September 15, 2014 - link
Well, you clearly missed the point then. Promise already makes a whole line of 3.5-inch DAS offerings.The Pegasus2 M4 is very nearly the same in both size and weight to a stack of 4 bare 3.5-inch drives, yet it comes with 4 hot-swap drive bays, an internal 110 W PSU, a custom hardware RAID controller, and a 4-channel Thunderbolt 2 interface so you can daisy-chain up to 6 of them. The RoC is an 8-Port, 6Gb/s SAS / SATA chip with a PCIe 2.0 x8 back end, paired with 512 MB of DDR2-800 ECC SDRAM, 8 MB of external NAND, and a Lattice MachX02 PLD, all of which is arguably overkill for the intended application.
The bottom line is that this "POS" extracts 100% of the potential of the drives it ships with, delivers peak performance beyond what is possible via USB 3.0, and does so as a single device that costs a grand. There are a *lot* of highly questionable Thunderbolt storage devices out there, but this really isn't one of them.
PeterBr - Sunday, May 3, 2015 - link
Im new to this and have to build a drive for 4k video editing. Do you have a raid controller card in mind that you could point me to? I just bought this M4 last night and now Im considering returning for something more affordable.CalaverasGrande - Friday, September 12, 2014 - link
Not to be snarky, but really, what is the point of testing it at all if you can not beg borrow or steal a Mac? There may not be significant differences from your perspective. However the target audience for this product is Mac owners.twotwotwo - Saturday, September 13, 2014 - link
They do have Thunderbolt and aren't saturating the interface; I don't see the problem unless you would choose to buy or not based on the software.WylyQuimby - Saturday, September 13, 2014 - link
CalverasGrande has a point. Thunderbolt doesn't exactly have the best support on Windows. I have two TB drives. One is not recognized at all by Win8.1 and the other has to be plugged in before booting. For a good scientific test one should try to eliminate all systematic errors. TB devices are primarily purchased by Mac users, one should at least also test them on a Mac.Osamede - Saturday, September 13, 2014 - link
I must agree. It is great to see a Windows based analysis of this. Very useful. But........at the same time, the primary user base is on Mac OSX and it is a major omission to see a review that completely ignores that side the equation.Furthermore, there are other omissions, which are material to the type of user who would consider the product:
- No discussion of drive height limits e.g. can I stick a 12 or 15mm height 2.5" drive in here
- No discussion of noise/fan
And the conclusion should have touched upon other similar products which use 2.5" drives and said something even brief about how this one here stacks up in performance, functionality and value compared to those.
Overall this "review" was a bit on the shallow side and just not good enough IMO.
Death666Angel - Saturday, September 13, 2014 - link
"- No discussion of drive height limits e.g. can I stick a 12 or 15mm height 2.5" drive in here- No discussion of noise/fan"
First page specifically calls out 9.5mm drives. It does not mention 12.5mm or 15mm height in any way. I derive from that, that they aren't supported.
Furthermore, in the conclusion, the article mentions the loud noise the fan makes.
Osamede - Saturday, September 13, 2014 - link
Ok let me rephrase that. This is Anandtech - I expect more substance than this:"I did notice one irritating thing in the M4, however. The fan in the M4 makes a fairly loud noise even when the device is idling. Unfortunately I do not have a proper decibel meter to provide an objective measure of the noise."
I mean just put out some numbers please. No numbers and there is no way one can compare this with the next product you review in two weeks. The objective and comparable approach is one major reason why people come here.
Fair enough?
Gigaplex - Saturday, September 13, 2014 - link
It stated fairly explicitly that they didn't have a meter to record numbers. Would you like them to make up some numbers?Osamede - Sunday, September 14, 2014 - link
Maybe your comprehension not very good - my point is they should have one and do document the numbers. Like I said, just not good enough.Worse yet is apologists for half-done "review".