Malcolm Owen
Promise Technology is updating its Pegasus3 desktop RAID storage systems by introducing four new 'Mac-ready' models, with the additional Pegasus R4, R6, and R8 storage devices offering up to 80 terabytes of capacity with data transfers over Thunderbolt 3, but this time will work on Mac 'out of the box.'
Introduced last year, the original version of the Pegasus3 multi-bay storage devices were pitched as an ideal way for professional users to locally store large amounts of data. Built around Thunderbolt 3 and its 40Gb/s bandwidth, with two Thunderbolt 3 ports allowing for the hardware to be connected up to six daisy-chained devices.
For the Mac-ready models, Promise has worked to make sure the Pegasus3 units are all able to work straight away with a Mac or MacBook from the start, and supports the maximum throughput allowed under Thunderbolt 3. To make getting the Pegasus3 up and running even faster, Promise also supplies a 1-meter (3-foot) cable for the Thunderbolt 3 connection with the device.
Promise suggests the Pegasus3 range is well suited for a 4K workflow, allowing for seamless editing and streaming of HD and 4K content over the Thunderbolt 3 connection, while also backing up files to the storage devices at the same time.
The 4, 6, and 8-bay enclosures offer maximum capacities of 16, 36, 64, and 80 terabytes, depending on the model, with the highest capacity R8 allowing up to eight 10TB drives to be installed. Able to be set up in a number of different RAID configurations, the hot-swappable drive bays allow old or faulty drives to be quickly replaced.
The new Mac-ready Pegasus3 models will be available in North America at first, with pre-orders through Amazon and other retailers, and will expand to other regions in the second quarter. The R4 retails for $1799, with the R6 and R8 selling for $3999 and $6499 respectively.
Marko Zivkovic
Wesley Hilliard
Christine McKee
William Gallagher
Andrew O'Hara
5 Comments
I'd like to see some benchmarks comparing hardware RAID systems with RAID boxes running the latest version of SoftRAID. OWC sells both kinds but their benchmarks are showing SoftRAID runs faster and is easier to manage than hardware RAID systems. Maybe Promise will finally have a hardware RAID product that actually works properly with a Mac and runs fast with minimal overhead. I know OWC's RAIDs are limited to four drive bays but with HDD capacities going through the roof and prices dropping, having a four drive system can actually provide a lot of managed storage. Now if only those huge SSDs from SageMicro would come down in price we'd have an extremely fast RAID in a small footprint.
Yawn......late to the game guys
And for all you trolls who keeping talking about SSD this and SSD that, get real. When we do all our shoots, the source files are massive. No way we are storing out finished projects on SSD. The cost alone is just not justifiable. Don't need the performance for idle storage
Our basic workstations run a Bolt3 for our scratch disks and WIP storage, and once rendered/shelved, we move it over to the HDD array. Either a 12Big for the video teams, and 6Big for the photogs.
Can you order parts if something breaks? Motherboard blows up, is it replaceable? Have to watch that! They will want you to simply buy a whole new unit!
I have Promise's TB2 6-drive system. Absolutely love it and at 900MB/s it is plenty fast for storing all my RAW photographs and streaming the gobs of videos I have on it.
Is there a real-world performance difference between the TB2 and TB3 of the R6 array? The drives are all SATA-based, so even with TB3, I would expect performance to be exactly the same.