Customer Reviews and Ratings

3.5 out of 5 stars

Based on 30 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).

  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    so far, so good

    • Written by from Brooklyn

    I'm only two data points, but I'm so pleased with the speed of weekly backups: I bought two R6 12TB Pegasii last winter and use them for storage and archiving, configured to RAID 10. They've been reliable: they're 105 miles apart, each attached to MacMinis, well-ventilated, and powered by APC power supplies. Early next year I'll start swapping out the 2TB drives for 4TB drives and I'll investigate formatting the disks with ZFS instead of HFS+. For uptime and backup, I'm thrilled.

    Carbon Copy Cloner write a Friday afternoon backup to a more-portable LaCie Thunderbolt drive and I train-net the data from one Pegasus to the other.

    37 of 41 people found this useful

  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    Great product

    • Written by from San Juan Capistrano

    I've owned my Pegasus R4 since 12/01/2011
    Why I love it:
    1) Quiet
    2) Fast. Amazingly fast.
    3) Value for the quantity, reliability and speed of the storage.
    4) Good support.

    There was a huge problem with this product losing Thunderbolt connectivity when it first shipped. Boards all over the US and UK lit up reporting the problem. It took a few weeks but Promise was responsive, sent out new firmware and I haven't had a problem since.

    It's sitting 8 inches from my display and has been running 24/7 since Dec 2011. Did I say it is quiet?

    Yes RAID 5 yields 3T from 4T of physical drive space. This is a known fact of any RAID system. You have to give up something to get redundancy.

    42 of 42 people found this useful

  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    the best

    • Written by from BELLEVILLE

    It works the way they say it will...very fast....LOVE IT!

    13 of 16 people found this useful

  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    Don't be impatient!

    • Written by from Seminole

    So I've read a lot of complaints about this device online. However, I feel much of the disgruntled comments coincide with typical, Western Culture, impatience. Yes, the Pegasus Promise R4 really does take 10 hours to set itself up. You'll see blue lights flashing on the front until it's fully configured. Instructions are simple and accurate. 1) Plug it in, 2) Connect the Thunderbolt Cable [not included] to the upper right Thunderbolt port on back of R4 if facing the back of it, 3) Power up the RAID, 4) Do something else for 10 hours while it configures. The R4 is so quiet that you won't even know it's there save the pretty blue lights! It's blistering fast and very stable. I do a lot of AV work for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Writing to this drive takes care of the heavy lifting and shaves several days off of each project that I attend to.

    38 of 45 people found this useful

  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    Excellent product

    • Written by from Fort McMurray

    Bought this to back my ever-growing photo / video collection. That being said, I have also backed up my entire 2TB hdd on the system, so that in the event of a total hdd failue on my Mac (iMac i7 - 27: 2TB hdd) then I am covered. Unlike other comments, mine arrived fully configured in Raid 5, and I was able to start copying files to the drive immediately upon hook-up. My only complaint, for this price, not including the thunderbolt cable is a joke. Especially when both the drive and the cable were ordered together, but the cable was shipped separately, and arrived 4 days after the drive. Someone really needs to look into this issue. Would I order another one if required, absolutely, the performance is refreshing.

    27 of 33 people found this useful

  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    Perfect storage

    • Written by from Berthoud

    We have had this product in use 24/7 since they first came out. To date we have had not a single issue with the device. We use it for server backup at our small business. Easy to use and flawless operation. Drive and device quality is top notch. Only downside is the high price as with all thunderbolt devices.

    21 of 24 people found this useful

  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    Excellent Product - No worries no with one backup drive going bad.

    • Written by from MILWAUKEE

    Was shipped promptly. Plugged it in - connected thunderbolt cable (should be included but wasn't ) and away we went. It is quiet and fast! Wow!

    24 of 28 people found this useful

  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    PEGASUS ROCKS

    • Written by from sacramento

    I use w/FCP X /Motion 5 and a new iMac. No lag time.
    Very efficient/fast.

    27 of 30 people found this useful

  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    Amazing Performance

    • Written by from Bainbridge Island

    My only complaint about this drive is the plug-and-play. I have a MacBook Air at one end, the Promise Pegasus in the middle, and a standard Dell 24" monitor daisy-chained at the other end of the drive (yes, it works fine with a non-thunderbolt cable, just use the mini-display port adaptor) but getting them all connected is inconsistent. The only way that always works is to shut down the MacBook Air, plug in the Thunderbolt cable, turn on the PP drive, then boot up. However, sometimes I can just plug the MBA in while it's running, or when it's in sleep (clamshell mode) and sometimes both the PP drive and the monitor connect, sometimes only one connects.

    That's one small gripe. And this unit is not completely silent; however I keep it under the desk and cannot hear a thing there. I use Lightroom for photo editing and have about 2GB of photos on the PP drive. Access is nearly instantaneous. There's absolutely no comparison to my previous solution: MacBook Pro with FW800.

    Here are some benchmarks I ran. You can also compare these to a review that a customer did for the Lacie drive.

    Performance comparison of Promise Pegasus to standard MacBook Air SSD

    SDD | Promise Pegasus (MB/sec)

    uncached write (256k Blocks)
    167.06 | 328.42

    uncached read (256k Blocks)
    195.96 | 339.04

    Random uncached write (256k Blocks)
    172.45 | 321.93

    Random uncached read (256k Blocks)
    123.99 | 362.13

    33 of 36 people found this useful

  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    pairs well with mac mini for fileserving

    • Written by from Hamilton

    I've hooked the R4 to the latest mac mini (server edition) and it makes a really nice file sharing setup for the 35 people in our office. This and the mini replace an xserve and XServe RAID unit...I'm saving a lot of electricity and I haven't seen any performance issues for this sort of application.

    34 of 37 people found this useful

  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    Delivers!

    • Written by from Camarillo

    If we look away from the inflated price (first time buyers have to pay a premium) and a rather bulky and heavy design, it really is amazing what I am now capable of doing.

    I work in music and am now able to have LION on my laptop while my Snow Leopard partition, Audio drive partition and all my software reside in the pegasus.

    Quite simple, while at home i use my internal SSD with Lion.

    When at the studio, I boot from the pegasus and use Pro Tools and all my plugins etc with the Snow Leopard setup I have.

    Believe it or not, it is actually FASTER than my internal SSD would ever have been!

    I am in love with this setup and can recommend it to anyone!

    PCIe Pro Tools owners, get rid of it and go LE with Thunderbolt! I did and actually MADE money on the HD2 rig I had.

    I also bought the Thunderbolt display and have a perfect hun for everything!

    Its just amazing how my this has actually increased my mobility, effectivity and enthusiasm!

    Thanks Apple, Intel and Promise!

    33 of 35 people found this useful

  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    The R4 has it all!

    • Written by from Omaha

    This is an extremely fast drive setup! I will admit, I had my doubts about spending the money on something like this, but after doing some research, I felt comfortable and made the leap!

    The R4 and the R6 come out of the box set at Raid 5, which gives you security in that if one drive fails, you will not loose your data. That being said, if you happen to have 2 or multiple drives fail...your out of luck. You can set it up for Raid 0, which would give your the fastest speeds, but you would loose the protection.

    While the setup is painless, it does take some time. Unbox the unit, plug in the power cable and the thunderbolt cable and then...wait 10 hours. 10 hours is how long it takes to have the drive format to Raid 5. Why they don't do this before it leaves the factory, I don't know, but...? I would recommend that you install the Promise Software bundle that is actually located not the drive, not on a DVD.

    After setup is finished, you are good to go!

    I have been experiencing Write Speeds of 385MBs-624MBs and Read Speeds of 182MBs-320MBs, depending on the file format and size. It's hands down much faster than my USB 2.0 drive and my Firewire 800 drive!


    I purchased this to backup my pictures files from iPhoto and Aperture primarily as well as my Music collection and my Movie Collection as well.

    The $999 price tag made sense after I added up the cost of my Music, my Movies and My Photos.

    If you are serious about backing up your computer and files, make a list of what you would spend to replace what you would loose and then buy a hard drive for that amount to use with Time Machine.

    35 of 39 people found this useful

  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    Thunderboltingly Fast

    • Written by from Flinders Park

    I edit weddings from two high end video cameras and two Nikon D7000 cameras. I also Have several very large Aperture 3 libraries. This raid is the best thing I have ever done to speed up the editing process. If I scroll through my images (not in preview mode) in Aperture, I can't keep up with how fast they are rendered to screen, and Final Cut Pro X absolutely rips through scrubbing. Thunderbolt technologies are a must going forward.

    50 of 52 people found this useful

  • 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.

    124 of 136 people found this useful