Apple Thunderbolt Cable & Promise Pegasus RAID System Available Now
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 28, 2011 10:16 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
- Apple
- Thunderbolt
- Promise
- Pegasus
This morning Apple finally announced availability of its first Thunderbolt cable alongside Promise's Pegasus external RAID solution. We've previewed the Pegasus in the past but today we received a shipping model of the 6-bay 12TB.
The packaging isn't quite as nice as what we're used to from Apple, but the device inside is really what matters. The R6 comes with six removable drive bays capable of accepting both 2.5" and 3.5" drives.
There are two LEDs per drive bay as well as power and Thunderbolt LEDs on the left side of the device:
The Pegasus is audible thanks to its six hard drives and two fans, but it's not what I'd consider loud.
Promise is announcing availability of four different configurations of the Pegasus available via Apple's online store:
| Promise Pegasus Lineup | ||||||
| # of Bays | Drive Configuration | Default Capacity | Price | |||
| Promise Pegasus R4 4TB | 4 | 4 x 1TB RAID-5 | 2.7TB | $999 | ||
| Promise Pegasus R4 8TB | 4 | 4 x 2TB RAID-5 | 5.7TB | $1499 | ||
| Promise Pegasus R6 6TB | 6 | 6 x 1TB RAID-5 | 4.7TB | $1499 | ||
| Promise Pegasus R6 12TB | 6 | 6 x 2TB RAID-5 | 9.7TB | $1999 | ||
All of the available Pegasus systems ship with 7200RPM 3.5" hard drives, although Promise mentioned that we will may see SSD enabled configurations in the future. The 12TB R6 we received uses six Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 2TB drives (HDS723020BLA642) in a 9.7TB RAID-5 configuration. The 7K3000 spins its four platters at 7200RPM and buffers data with a 64MB on-board cache. The drive has a 6Gbps SATA interface although the Pegasus R4/R6 supports SAS drives as well. All of the Pegasus devices ship in RAID 5 however they do support RAID-0/1/5/50/6/10.
I had no problems creating data on the Pegasus array at up to 688MB/s
The 2 meter Thunderbolt cable is also finally available at $49.99. The cable is compatible with all 2011 MacBook Pros as well as the 2011 iMac.
We'll be testing the Pegasus R6 over the coming days, stay tuned for our review!
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KoolAidMan1 - Friday, July 1, 2011 - link
Apple does not have exclusivity on Thunderbolt. Intel themselves said that PC builders and OEMs can add Thunderbolt at their own discretion. Sony already has an ultraslim with Thunderbolt, as well as a custom dock it plugs into via TB that has an outboard dedicated GPU (cool!) and outputs for three additional external displays. This is before Apple's own Thunderbolt equipped Macbook Airs have been released.It is in the hands of companies to get going on these. I want Thunderbolt in my next PC build, and I want it on the motherboard and not via a PCI-E card. Hopefully next year.
Landiepete - Thursday, June 30, 2011 - link
Apple are plugging the thing on their website. You can bet your hind quarter there is an Apple tax involved. If only to be associated with Apple.L. - Wednesday, June 29, 2011 - link
Don't forget there is configuration, ease of use and all that stuff, which you do not include in your quote ;)Also 10GbE is not cheap yet ..
NickDG17 - Tuesday, June 28, 2011 - link
I put together a 4TB RAID 5 array for my new Core i7 2600K system for half the cost of this 4TB model. Performance is great considering I am only using 4 bays. I don't see Thunderbolt having a huge impact unless the price comes down.Sure 10GBps vs 4.5Gbps can be big, but 4.5Gbps is already super fast, and cheaper, much cheaper.
Now if Apple only gave us a choice and included USB3 with their hardware...
dagamer34 - Wednesday, June 29, 2011 - link
Need an external solution for laptops so the Mac Pro will no longer be needed.L. - Wednesday, June 29, 2011 - link
Raid 5 is bad mkay. read up, stop using it, be one with the world ;)Fatchap - Thursday, June 30, 2011 - link
OK, I'll bite. in what way is RAID 5 bad?Penti - Thursday, June 30, 2011 - link
USB 3.0 will come with Intel's Ivy Bridge next year for all the consumer stuff. You can already use USB 3.0 with MBP 17 through Expresscard. It will be included later as said without any markup though.kyhwana - Tuesday, June 28, 2011 - link
Can you test this thing with SSDs? See where the bottleneck is..Alphacrux - Tuesday, June 28, 2011 - link
Any way to automatically remove posts from those stupid spammers? Honestly, does anyone buy anything at all from these idiotic sites?