Promise Pegasus R4 4TB (4x1TB) RAID System

Hardware RAID that unleashes the power of Thunderbolt.

Promise Pegasus R4 is the first four-bay high-performance hardware RAID solutions designed to unleash the raw power of Thunderbolt. Pegasus R4 features four 1TB 7200-rpm hard drives in a compact hardware RAID enclosure with Thunderbolt connectivity, delivering over 500MB/s of disk performance.
  • 4TB of raw capacity
  • Advanced RAID engine
  • Supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 50, 6, 60 and 10
  • Attractive, stylish, and compact enclosure
  • Ultra-quiet design Two Thunderbolt ports
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3.5 out of 5 stars

Based on 30 reviews

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Purchase Information

$1,099.00

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Features

Apple Recommends For

Creative pro workstations, small servers, power users, and consumers who desire stylish high-capacity external storage with high performance and enterprise level data protection.

Thunderbolt technology is a new, high-speed, dual-protocol I/O technology designed for performance, simplicity, and flexibility. Capable of delivering a blistering two channels of bi-directional 10 Gbit/s (1.25GB/s) per port of performance, Thunderbolt technology combines PCI Express and Display port into an interface using a single cable for connectivity to devices. Thunderbolt technology was developed by Intel and brought to market with technical collaboration from Apple.

Pegasus R4 is ideal for creative pro workstations, small servers, power users, and consumers who desire stylish high-capacity external storage with high performance and enterprise level data protection. Pegasus R4 is capable of delivering over 500 MB/s of bandwidth that is 10 times faster than USB 2.0.

Easy to Use management software

Pegasus R4 comes preconfigured out of the box. Simply unpack, connect the power cable, connect the Thunderbolt cable (sold separately) to the Thunderbolt port on your computer and you're ready to store music, photos, videos, and documents or ingest and edit production video. Managing Pegasus R4 is effortless with software designed for Mac OS X.

Storage for the Digital Home

With two channels of bi-directional 10 Gbit/s performance Thunderbolt allows you to back up your computer while editing the video of your summer vacation and listening to an iTunes playlist. Fast, safe, and reliable external storage is essential to protect your music, photos, videos, and other valuable data. Pegasus R4 provides massive storage space and fast performance for popular applications such as iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, Garageband, Photoshop, and media center applications. Backup your invaluable digital media, documents, and also your entire computer or workstation to Pegasus R4 with Time Machine in Mac OS X.

Blistering performance and unparalleled flexibility

With over 500 MB/s of performance Pegasus R4 with Thunderbolt delivers a massive and unprecedented leap in raw power and performance for amateur professionals, audio engineers, photographers, and video post production engineers. Final Cut professionals can ingest, edit, and playback multiple streams of uncompressed HD 10-bit and 12-bit video while protecting valuable workflows, audio sessions, and other creative media content with Promise's award-winning enterprise level RAID 6 engine featuring mature error-handling schemes for the ultimate in data protection. Graphic artists using Adobe Photoshop and Maya 3D animation software can manipulate and archive high-resolution graphics on Pegasus with lightning-fast responsiveness and relative ease.

Thunderbolt technology's multi-protocol support enables Pegasus R4 to deliver amazing flexibility. Daisy-chain more than one Pegasus R4 enclosure to a single Thunderbolt port or connect a display to Pegasus R4 for the ultimate in convenience and interface connectivity.

Hardware RAID protection for small business

Protect your valuable business data with a reliable hardware RAID solution. You can use Pegasus R4 as large storage for a desktop system or as external storage solution for a small server. With 3TB of storage in RAID 5, you'll have the capacity you need for data and backups with the protection of hardware RAID.

Cost-effective expandable storage for home use

In today's digital world, you consistently acquire and amass large amounts of personal digital media using smart phones and digital cameras, in addition to downloadable digital media acquired through online stores such as iTunes. The Pegasus R4 can protect all these memories meant to last a lifetime from single drive failures, at the same time it's providing data protection, high availability, and high reliability.

Flexible backup solution

Connect Pegasus R4 to your Mac for use with Time Machine to back up your critical system files, applications, data files, music, pictures, and videos.

Ultra-quiet and eco-smart

Pegasus R4 is RoHS compliant. In simple terms Pegasus R4 is eco-friendly, keeping harmful lead out of the environment and our delicate ecosystems. Sporting a new enclosure design, an 80Plus power supply, and active fan management, system noise is never an issue—making Pegasus R4 ideal for desktop, small office environments and or any room in the house.

Highlights

  • 4TB of raw capacity (2.7TB configured RAID 5 and formatted with HFS+)
  • Advanced RAID engine
  • Supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 50, 6, 60 and 10
  • Attractive, stylish, and compact enclosure
  • Ultra-quiet design
  • Two Thunderbolt ports
  • Hot-swappable bays for effortless drive access and serviceability
  • Robust error handling provides superior data protection

Did You Notice?

To use a Pegasus RAID System with your Mac, you'll need a Thunderbolt cable.

Technical Specs

General

  • Other Features: Time Machine Compatible,RAID Support

Perfomance

  • Hard Drive Spindle Speed: 7200 RPM
  • Maximum Transfer Rate: Up to 500 MB/s in RAID 0

Power

  • AC Voltage: 90-100W with PFC, 100-230V auto-ranging, 50-60Hz AC
  • Power: Power consumption: 78W max load (read and write); 55W idle mode

Dimension

  • Weight: 15.3 lb./6.9 kg
  • Height: 9.9 in./25.0 cm
  • Width: 7.7 in./19.5 cm
  • Length: 7.3 in./18.5 cm

Compatibility

Mac

  • Mac OS X v10.6.8 or later
  • 100MB of free hard-drive space
  • Mac with Thunderbolt port
  • Thunderbolt cable (sold separately)

What's in the Box?

  • Pegasus R4 with four 1TB 7200-rpm drives
  • Quick start guide
  • Power cable

Manufacturer Information

Warranty

  • Note: Products sold through this website that do not bear the Apple Brand name are serviced and supported exclusively by their manufacturers in accordance with terms and conditions packaged with the products. Apple's Limited Warranty does not apply to products that are not Apple-branded, even if packaged or sold with Apple products. Please contact the manufacturer directly for technical support and customer service.
  • Warranty: Two years with a one-year limited warranty on fan and power adapter

Part Number

  • UPC or EAN No.: 704118085552
  • Mfr. Part Number: F40DS4700100000

Manufacturer Note

  • Note: To use a Pegasus RAID System with your Mac, you'll need to purchase a Thunderbolt cable.
 

Ratings & Reviews

3.5

Based on 30 reviews

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Most Useful Reviews

  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    It Definitely Has the Speed, But ...

    • Written by from Tetonia

    Drive is installed on a 2011 17" MacBook Pro (8,3) Core I7 2.3 GHz 8 GB.

    IMHO, $50 is a little much for a 6 foot cable that ought to be included with the drive.

    Out of the box, it comes set up for a RAID 5 configuration which gives you 3 TB. Here are QuickBench results with 1.093 TB free:

    Transfer Size Large Read Large Write

    2 MBytes 620.975 MB/Sec 554.112 MB/Sec
    3 MBytes 698.929 MB/Sec 610.119 MB/Sec
    4 MBytes 724.439 MB/Sec 610.904 MB/Sec
    5 MBytes 766.055 MB/Sec 625.012 MB/Sec
    6 MBytes 774.070 MB/Sec 590.093 MB/Sec
    7 MBytes 788.594 MB/Sec 613.141 MB/Sec
    8 MBytes 808.657 MB/Sec 657.099 MB/Sec
    9 MBytes 818.175 MB/Sec 707.836 MB/Sec
    10 MBytes 801.079 MB/Sec 622.765 MB/Sec

    Large Ave 755.664 MB/Sec 621.231 MB/Sec

    ... Which is almost 3 times faster than my 3 Gbs SSD.

    But first you have to wait 10 hours while it sets up the RAID 5 configuration. Backups from my SSD to the Pegasus are lightening fast. However, I've noticed two problems with this drive. The first and most serious is that when I tried to transfer large folders (> 1 TB) to the R4 from a G Raid drive connected via an esata card, the copy would halt after a few hundred GB and my G Raid drive would be trashed. It did this twice in a row. I was finally able to transfer the files by connecting the G Raid with a FW 800 connection. This is probably an Apple rather than a Promise prroblem.

    The second problem is that when using the Pegasus as a boot drive, it's no faster or even slower booting than a regular HDD. My SSD is much faster on boot, but at least you can boot from the Pegasus. I'm going to reconfigure it as a RAID 0 and get 33% more storage than I have now and hopefully a speed increase.     …More

    274 of 309 people found this useful

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    Pegasus RAID R4

    • Written by from Las Vegas

    I use this system with my MacBook Pro 17 in 2.3 GHz.

    As mentioned in another review it takes over 10 hours of setup time after taking it out of the box and is configured for RAID 5. This leaves 3TB of storage. After testing transfer speeds, it averages around 380 MB/s read/write using the AJA system test.

    I have my Apple Cinema Display 30 in monitor via dual link mini-display port attached to the Thunderbolt port on the Pegasus. It does not allow passive transfer via the Thunderbolt port so you must keep the Pegasus on in order to use the external display.

    The OWC 3g SSD inside the MBP boots much faster than the Pegasus, even though data transfer is around 240 MB/s by AJA system test.

    The OS was updated to 10.7 and seems to run fine on the Pegasus system.

    Overall, the system is a little pricey but offers a reliable fast external storage system.     …More

    165 of 187 people found this useful

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  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    Fastest Storage Ever Made!!!

    • Written by from Wheat Ridge

    This is the fastest external storage device ever made available to consumers period! I transferred my entire iTunes library (182 GB) from my MacBook air (2011) to the promise Pegasus R4 model in 14 min which is crazy fast. Though the Pegasus did not heat up during the process thanks to the duel fans and remained quiet. Also promise kept Mac user in mind with a simple set up and a application to manage Pegasus Which is done for you. This application basically runs Ccheck ups on space, temperature, power, etc. With great power comes great cost, though its worth the money if your going to use pegasus to its full potentioal. Promise also announced they would eventually sell precofigured drives for pegasus- which makes upgrading an option down the road. Being a consumer who is using the Promise Pegasus to store my iTunes library and stream movies from it, it works great. I can watch an HD movie from the Pegasus without any lag, even when skipping around. Buyers be aware that it will take 10 hours to automatically set up/configure the pegasus drives. I just sat back and let it do its thing. All in all this is a product that lives up to its name and is lightning fast. …More

    124 of 136 people found this useful

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Most Recent Reviews

  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    Great system / meets expectations

    • Written by from Birmensdorf

    I took delivery of the Pegasus a couple of days ago. It is totally meeting my expectations. I run it with a Macbook Air 2011 and this combo works flawlessly. Speed is fantastic and faster than the internal SSD hard disk. The R4 is hardly noticeable in a quiet room. I have used the second TB connector to hook up an older Macbook in target disk mode with a Thunderbolt adapter to pull over data.

    Buying and setting up the system requires some minimal reading. It seems like not everyone of the reviewers here took advantage of that ...

    The Pegasus R4 does not come with a Thunderbolt cable. That is all right if you know about it upfront and can then order the proper length.

    Setup is a no brainer. It takes some 10 hours to synchronise, which is properly stated in the documentation. So I started it in the morning and when I came back from work, everything was set up.

    If I shut down the Macbook Air with the R4 connected, the R4 properly switches off. And vice versa, the R4 switches on when the Macbook Air comes on. I've noticed a small delay when prompting for Username/Password, when the R4 is connected (compared to a plain Macbook Air). My Macbook Air is encrypted - not sure if this may cause the small delay (approx 5 sec).     …More

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  • 1.0 out of 5 stars

    Loud and documentation is totally misleading

    • Written by from Plano

    I don't suggest using this inside a sound studio or anywhere silence is golden. It's too loud for such applications and the longest Apple thunderbolt cables (2m) are too short to position it sufficiently away from the computer where the microphone is situated.

    Three pieces of documentation came with it. The quick start says attach the power, plug in the thunderbolt cable and that's it. No mention of the 10-hour 'sync' time. I can't get a real answer anywhere about what actually is happening during this time. If someone knows, please tell me. Back to the documentation. Then there is a booklet that indicates that nothing will work correctly unless you install some EFI firmware and use a utility CD. No CD came with it so I called tech support. The technician said I don't need to install any firmware and there isn't supposed to be a CD but the utility will be downloaded or somehow available once i connect the unit. Didn't say available where or how I would get to it. Separate from the other pieces of documentation is a flyer indicating that initialization and synchronization can take up to 10 hours.

    "When do I install the utility" I asked, "before or after the 10 hours?" Answer: "Before or after." No word on how I will know when the 10 hour 'service' is complete. Now that I've connected and started the unit, I don't see any utility. There is an icon on the desktop but no utility.

    And what is this thing doing to my computer during this 'service'?

    OMG, this thing had better be worth it!     …More

    2 of 9 people found this useful

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  • 1.0 out of 5 stars

    Only 1 RAID option

    • Written by from San Rafael

    After over 30 hours of waiting for the drive to set up, I found that the software would not let me set up any other than RAID 0, or RAID 5, which was the factory configuration. The "Wizard" has all options grayed out.
    Contacting the online support just got me the response "I do not know what the problem is:".

    I have read through the manual repeatedly and am no closer to being able to use this drive than when it arrived, and this is not my first Rodeo.
    I'm guessing It's fine if you want RAID 5, but not for other options.     …More

    10 of 14 people found this useful

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