Promise Pegasus R4 4TB (4x1TB) RAID System

Reviews for Promise Pegasus R4 4TB (4x1TB) RAID System

Customer Reviews and Ratings

3.5 out of 5 stars

Based on 30 reviews

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  • 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

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    Fast but not as fast as what I expected.

    • Written by from McComb

    To start off I have a brand new i7 iMac 3.4Ghz, 16GB of ram with a 2Gb video card. I hate to say it but just a standard 1TB Internal HD and the Pegasus R4 4TB system.

    I put my R4 in Raid 10 for protection(Yes, I have another separate HD Time Machined to the R4 just in case) I did a lot of research and couldn't find a good reason to go with Raid 5 for what I'm doing. I don't care that I have 2TB of space as my working space is only between 1-1.5TB at all times anyways. Could not in good faith go with Raid 0 with some of the reviews I've seen.( I wish Time Machine would let you use 2 different HD's to back up 1 HD, then I would go Raid 0. I need 3 backups, these files are just to important. lol)

    After some speed test using the Black Magic Design from the App store I am getting a decent 220MB Write and a 205MB Read however....yeah, there is a however. lol While copying files from say my internal to the R4 I'm getting a rate of around 128MBps and compared to my Firewire 800 getting 73MBps that is not even twice as fast as firewire. The speed test are all honkey-dory but what I really care about is real world usage. 128MBps transfer speed is pretty good so don't get me wrong but for the price I expected a lot more. No wonder I couldn't find any good speed reviews on the web(real usage) people don't want to post them because they are so bad and no where near the 500MB claimed.

    Copying files from one folder to another folder within the R4 I'm only getting between 90MB-128MB...why I'm not 100% sure, maybe it's in the way I have the Raid 10 set up? There are little things that I see as an improvement like thumbnails...they load like right now and I'm not talking about a folder with 20 thumbnails, I'm talking a folder with 2000 10MB jpeg files....scroll down and bam they are there. Load a preview for an image and it's way faster than the firewire 800 drive. To my disappointment when importing and exporting to and from Lightroom I am getting the same load times as the firewire 800. Is this because of my lowly 1TB internal HD.....most probably so at some point I would like to get a internal SSD drive. Why I didn't at the time, I brought 3 iMac's...an SSD just wasn't in the budget at the time. lol(2 i7's and an i5 is what I got)

    Overall I recommend it, it's faster and with us tech guys we don't mind spending a lot for a little extra speed but I wish it just performed just a little bit better or at least lower the 500MB rate so the disappointing 128MB doesn't sound so bad. lol

    26 of 46 people found this useful

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  • 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

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  • 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

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  • 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

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  • 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

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    Fast Storage, Good Control Interface

    • Written by from Highlands Ranch

    The Pegasus comes with the Promise Utility to manage it. You have the option of letting it configure itself out of the box (yes, as others have mentioned, this does take 8 to 10 hours) or you can set it up in custom configurations.

    I have mine set up as a RAID0 for the fastest write times. The bonus of this is that there is no waiting to initialize. I chose the drives, made the array, and was off and running. I do have other backup in place, so I'm not relying on the RAID5 to save me in the case of drive failure.

    For large chunks of data, this is a very fast storage system. Anything that requires a quick interface (high def video editing) will benefit from the speeds.

    Some other reviewers have commented that booting from the Pegasus isn't as fast as an SSD even though the transfer speeds are faster. Sequential speeds are faster, but for booting and application opening, you really want to look at random speeds. SSDs beat HDDs hands down, so booting from an SSD will be faster. This isn't any fault of Promise or Thunderbolt. It's just a fact of HDD limitations.

    If your needs justify the cost of the Pegasus, this is a great product.

    40 of 44 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.

    124 of 136 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.

    165 of 187 people found this useful

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  • 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.

    274 of 309 people found this useful

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