Customer Reviews and Ratings

3.5 out of 5 stars

Based on 35 reviews

  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    Almost didn't buy due to reviews

    • Written by from Aurora

    I read all the reviews and spent hours looking for alternatives due to comments on noise and drive failures.

    The drive is very quite. I read and was disturbed by people mentioning db levels (im in music) i almost did not buy this drive for the reviews... this drive is almost silent! and i am not happy off at people who rated this as noisy as it cost me hours of review time!

    This drive is almost silent and you will not care about it running in your place. Its also reliable if you follow the simple guide to let it set itself up!

    Get it you will be happy:)

    28 of 33 people found this useful

  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    So far excellent

    • Written by from New York

    I have the 6 TB unit running now for almost 9 months 24x7. The RAID is attached to my Mac Mini Server and hosts 3 virtual machines (Win 2003 DNS Server, Linux Mail Server, Lion Web Server). No issues so far. Excellent performance, no lost disk, no sporadic disconnects. Worth five stars. I take one star off for the poor documentation and the cute but rather useless web interface. The biggest issue I see with the Promise Pegasus is the process of upgrading a system with disks of larger capacity. The documentation is rather silent about that.

    18 of 18 people found this useful

  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    crazy fast transfer rates

    • Written by from Lansing

    I've been working with this unit for 3 months, and I have nothing but positive things to say about the unit and the company. I'm a pro photographer and need reliable storage, and I've elected to use the R6 for all of my image databases. Transfer rates are very fast, and simply do not compare to other technologies (USB, FireWire, etc). Offloading images from camera goes so fast that I sometimes wonder if the images were actually transferred - the progress bar zips by! Bottom line, this unit has made a huge improvement in my work flow and should pay for itself within 12 months. Also, I called Promise about the best RAID configuration to use for my business and the tech was more than helpful and efficient. I will be purchasing another for backup.

    22 of 26 people found this useful

  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    A total game changer with blazing fast data transfer rates

    • Written by from New Holland

    I am a pro photographer with incredible storage needs, and so far over the past four months, this has met all of those needs. I use the Pegasus R6 12TB as an onsite redundancy system with a 1.8 GHz MacBook Air i7, and this configuration has dramatically improved my workflow. I actually work off of the Pegasus more than I ever anticipated with Aperture libraries up to 2TB - no issues. Initial configuration took under eight hours. Set up with an industry standard of RAID 5, so if this enclosure goes down, I'm not sunk, as with other proprietary solutions. I plan on ordering a second Promise RAID next year, and will daisy chain the two via Thunderbolt. Quiet, blazing fast, reliable.

    20 of 23 people found this useful

  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    Quiet and Cool

    • Written by from Los Altos

    Takes a long time (many hours) for initialization but them there are lots of bits. It runs so cool and quiet that except for the blue lights, one would not know it is on. Speed difference between FW800 Promise SmartStor and Thunderbolt Promise Pegasus is stunning.

    18 of 22 people found this useful

  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    Reliable, fast, quiet. Zero issues.

    • Written by from Menlo Park

    Solid. Heavy video use (FCP 4:2:2 1080i 59.97, 1080p 24fps). Quiet, but you are going to want an enclosure of some sort in your edit bay, it's not loud, but rather it emits more of a case conducted hummm (fans?drives?). Elastic feet from audiophile store helped, but it's around 50Hz, just enough to be noticeable. Before using it we nuked a disk to test, rebuild was around 10hr, not bad at all. If I had a new one, I'd hot spare one drive, as it makes auto rebuilds happen, so pleasant to come in and simply toss the bad drive in the trash (we plasma cutter melt dead drives for privacy) and carry on. Next step is 2 of these in 5+0, then we are thinking of one in a Hardigg case as "carryable" storage, pulling takes off CF cards (FW reader) from NanoFlashes.
    Beautiful job Promise. Now if only you made a PCIe Thunderbolt card !

    17 of 21 people found this useful

  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    Working Perfectly - My Data Finally Feels Safe

    • Written by from Toronto

    Speed is unbelievable as many other reviewers will attest to. It's far faster than the 2TB second drive in my 2011 iMac.

    But the best feature is the size and simplicity. I had it up and running in under 5 minutes, waited the 10 hours for the initialization, and it's worked perfectly ever since.

    The new iMac was the reason I bought the Pegasus - I suddenly had 2.25 GB of disk space to potentially backup, and wanted to be able to back that up with no concern. My existing backups wouldn't handle it, and reshuffling drives would take a day, lots of copying, and ongoing management efforts.

    It's not a bad idea to have 2x what you need for storage. Then you don't have to worry about running out space, and run into those awkward moments where your backups are offline for a month while you ponder your next step.

    I have 4TB used and 6TB free at the moment. I imagine I'll be at 6TB used and 4TB free by the end of the year. When I need more space in a few years, I'll buy a new NAS and relegate this one to secondary backup.

    16 of 20 people found this useful

  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    Amazing

    • Written by from Columbus

    Worked right out of the box. Simple to connect using thunderbolt cable and unbelievably fast. Very impressive. Typical speed using mid 2011 MBP is around 179 MB/sec although iv seen +375 MB/sec peak many times.

    Highly recommend

    15 of 18 people found this useful

  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    2 Thumbs up

    • Written by from novato

    Best drive bay I have ever had. I removed 3 of the stock drives and installed 3 240gb SSDs and and it works perfect. No problems, and the transfer rate on the 3 SSD (SATA-III) in RAID 0 in unreal. This is the first drive bay I have purchased that has actually did what it was expected to do, and done it well. (2 thumbs up)

    16 of 22 people found this useful

  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    Simply Awesome!

    • Written by from Los Angeles

    I recently got this and tested it out and it is so awesome! The transfer rate is so fast and this helps me meet deadlines faster than ever expected!

    27 of 44 people found this useful

  • 1.0 out of 5 stars

    BEWARE: RAID5 fails with one disk down !!!

    • Written by from Meyrin 2

    Fantastic performance BUT DO NOT BELIEVE YOUR DATA IS SAFE AND REDUNDANT !

    Used mine for three months in default configuration (6 disks in RAID5 providing 10Tb) and disk 5 died. Logical drive does not mount anymore! No Access to data!

    Currently awaiting replacement for failed disk and praying disk array will rebuid...

    12 of 17 people found this useful

  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    Best advice...

    • Written by from Clearwater

    We didn't use the default configuration. Instead, create your RAID using 5 drives and leave one as a hot spare.... assuming you are using a RAID to protect data not acquire speed.

    That being said, these things take a long time to setup, maybe 2 days. But after the wait, the device is a winner.

    6 of 6 people found this useful

  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    Works without a charm

    • Written by from Spaarndam

    I've hooked this up to my 2009 Macbook Pro and my late 2012 Imac 27". Both performed without a hitch, in the iMac setup I have it hooked up in combination with two external thunderbolt displays and it is still very fast.

    The speed is very impressive and I am very pleased with it.

    6 of 7 people found this useful

  • 3.0 out of 5 stars

    The reviews were pretty accurate.

    • Written by from Spanish Fork

    Item arrived DOA. The drives worked at first, but one quickly died. It was then I discovered the unit would freeze trying to repair the array. Tech support tried to only replace dead drive, but did replace as DOA when I insisted. Replacement unit was better but arrived with bad temp sensor. After another RMA, unit is finally working, and I'm satisfied. Two RMA's immediately after purchase should be an outrage, but at least Promise supported it and will for next two years. Don't expect to get this up and running quickly, expect 1-3 weeks setup. And even if it works for you out of the box, take out a drive from the array and test it can repair itself, or this problem will hide and you may not discover it until it's too late. Re: the Promise brand: adequate tech support - atrocious QA.

    5 of 6 people found this useful

  • 3.0 out of 5 stars

    Blazing Fast Operation Out Of The Box with Significant Shortcomings

    • Written by from Allison Park

    The drives are beautiful and the speed is insane for someone like me coming from eSATA and FW800 interfaces. This speed is what this decade would have been thought to bring in computer technology. I got two of these. There are two problems. First, the web site of the manufacturer is practically worthless. It is designed for IT support staff from large corporations and they definitely assume that an individual who may not have a Masters degree in IT is not an end-user of this device. You can't even register the device, whether or not a firmware update is new is at best a guessing game. More importantly, BEWARE, as of today, these devices do not spin down or go to sleep when my brand new iMac goes to sleep. Tech support's answer is "wait for a new firmware". They do run hot in the summer. They are by no means quiet. Pairing them up with a new iMac, which is essentially very quiet means downgrading your experience. I can hear these babies from my bedroom, which is 20 feet away from my office. That is where the ability to put them to sleep is important. I also worry about reports of RAID 5 not coming to fruition when one drive fails. Hope I won't find out. In short, great speed, cosmetically beautiful with what is at best poor tech support and drives that suffer from a serious case of insomnia.

    3 of 3 people found this useful