Does Promise Pegasus 1 R6 support 10TB HDDs?

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  • Last Post 19 February 2022
Riot Nrrrd posted this 01 July 2017

I have a Pegasus R6 with 6x2 TB Hitachi hard drives.  Recently I had to replace one drive.

I would like to have much more capacity in this unit than the 8 TB (RAID 6) configuration I have now.

Your Pegasus1 compatibility list does not list anything larger than a 4 TB drive.  :-(

It seems unfair that I can only double my current capacity, that I cannot buy these 10 TB drives to get 60 TB of raw capacity/40 TB RAID 6.  I have no need for Thunderbolt 2 or 3 speeds in my home setup.  The 4 TB drives in your Pegasus1 compatibility list are of limited availability these days.

How about certifying some more recent disks in your older products??

These units cost quite a bit of money, I do not feel like I should have to buy an entire new unit (that I cannot afford) just to get larger capacity disks.  (For example, there was an amazing sale on Hitachi 10 TB drives a few days ago that I could not take advantage of.)

If we absolutely cannot use 8 or 10 TB drives, the compatibility list for the Pegasus2 R6 lists the Toshiba MD04ACA600 6 TB drive.  Is that same drive likely to work fine in the Pegasus1 R6?  Even if it is too 'new' to be included in the Pegasus1 compatibility list?

Thanks in advance for your answer.

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Pradeep Chidambaranath posted this 01 July 2017

Hi Riot,

We are sorry to inform you that Pegasus 1 series has reached it end of life and there will not be any hardware update available for this unit. Kindly use the compatible drives to have a better preformance.

Regards

Pradeep C

 

Riot Nrrrd posted this 01 July 2017

Pradeep,

I am not asking for a hardware update.  I am asking whether drives newer/larger than 4 TB will work.  If you look at the 4 TB drives in your existing Pegasus 1 compatibility list, they are quite old and hard to find in New condition.  (And thus very pricey.)

By "hardware update" are you saying that the hardware (firmware) would have to be updated to work with newer/larger hard drives?

If instead I set all the drives in the unit to "PassThru", does that mean that a "hardware update" is not necessary and the unit will pass all SCSI commands straight through to the individual drives, so it would not matter if the drives were newer/larger than the ones in the "Pegasus 1 disk compatibility" list?

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Pradeep Chidambaranath posted this 01 July 2017

 Hi,

Once the product is moved to the legacy list, then there will not be any testing done for higher capacity drives. We recommend you to use the compatible drives. If you would like to use higher capacity drives, then you can try it at your own risk.  Promise will not take responsibility for any performance issue or hardware failure caused by using non-compatible drives. We are sorry for the inconvenience caused to you.

Regards

Pradeep C

Riot Nrrrd posted this 01 July 2017

I'm willing to take the responsibility.

Can you please address my 2nd question, about what happens in PassThru mode?  In another thread from last year, a customer wrote:

"In this configuration we are discussing, the Pegasus will not use its hardware RAID capabilities and will behave like a Thunderbolt docking station for your drives. The drives will each have single drive transfer speeds and will not benefit from the increased speeds when reading from several drives at once or writing to several drives at once which RAID offers."

which sounds to me like there would be no "hardware update" necessary to use newer/larger disks in this mode.

I am aware that it probably sounds ridiculous to use a nice RAID unit like yours as a mere "Thunderbolt docking station" and not take advantage of the hardware RAID capabilities, but if it gets me 60 TB of raw space instead of only 24 TB ...

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Raghuraman Kannan posted this 01 July 2017

Hi ,

Yes, you can use the drives in the passthru mode with out opting  for the RAID .

However, there is risk of data loss if the drive fails . We advise to have the backup of the data for such scenario.

Regarding the drive capacity , you can use any larger capacity drives as long the drive gets detected in the unit. Please be aware that using non-compatible or non tested drives in RAID Setup will have varied performance .

Please feel free to post any questions if you have any queries.

Thanks !

Riot Nrrrd posted this 01 July 2017

Raghuraman,

Yes I know about data loss.  I can configure a unit with 6 PassThru drives as a ZFS raidz2 zpool and avoid that problem.  (As a matter of fact, I have just done that to test it out.  See my next post below.  It seems to work just fine.)

So it sounds like you are saying that in PassThru mode, as long as the host (Mac mini in my case) detects the drive, the level of firmware in the Pegasus 1 R6 or what disk drives are in your compatibility list should not matter.  It should only matter if I want to use the unit as a traditional RAID unit using the RAID hardware in the Pegasus.  In which case trying any drives larger than 4 TB is a risk.

I have owned other, smaller, 2-disk RAID 1 units in the past.  Some of them were limited by their hardware to, say, 1.5 TB drives and no larger.  I was wanting to know if there was a similar size restriction in the Pegasus 1, or if this is just case where there were only 4 TB drives available at the time you EOL'ed the product - so no newer/larger drives would be certified for it.

If it is the former, then I know I have a disk size restriction I cannot get around.  If it is the latter, then there is a chance larger/newer drives would work - but you will not guarantee it.  Is that an accurate assessment?

Riot Nrrrd posted this 01 July 2017

Riot-Nrrrds-Mac-mini:Downloads admin$ sudo zpool create -m /Volumes/Media mediapool raidz2 /dev/disk2 /dev/disk3 /dev/disk4 /dev/disk5 /dev/disk6 /dev/disk7

 Riot-Nrrrds-Mac-mini:Downloads admin$ zpool status

  pool: mediapool

 state: ONLINE

  scan: none requested

config:

NAME        STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM

mediapool   ONLINE       0     0     0

  raidz2-0  ONLINE       0     0     0

    disk2   ONLINE       0     0     0

    disk3   ONLINE       0     0     0

    disk4   ONLINE       0     0     0

    disk5   ONLINE       0     0     0

    disk6   ONLINE       0     0     0

    disk7   ONLINE       0     0     0

errors: No known data errors

Riot-Nrrrds-Mac-mini:Downloads admin$ zfs list

NAME        USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT

mediapool  1.06M  7.02T   989K  /Volumes/Media

Roland Rick posted this 04 April 2019

He want's you to purchase a new system ;)

Pradeep,

I am not asking for a hardware update.  I am asking whether drives newer/larger than 4 TB will work.  If you look at the 4 TB drives in your existing Pegasus 1 compatibility list, they are quite old and hard to find in New condition.  (And thus very pricey.)

By "hardware update" are you saying that the hardware (firmware) would have to be updated to work with newer/larger hard drives?

If instead I set all the drives in the unit to "PassThru", does that mean that a "hardware update" is not necessary and the unit will pass all SCSI commands straight through to the individual drives, so it would not matter if the drives were newer/larger than the ones in the "Pegasus 1 disk compatibility" list?

Roland Rick posted this 04 April 2019

Hi Riot Nrrrd, this post of your's looks superb. Any hint's where I can get that ZFS for macOS Mojave 10.14.3?

Appreciate any help.

 

 

Riot-Nrrrds-Mac-mini:Downloads admin$ sudo zpool create -m /Volumes/Media mediapool raidz2 /dev/disk2 /dev/disk3 /dev/disk4 /dev/disk5 /dev/disk6 /dev/disk7

Riot-Nrrrds-Mac-mini:Downloads admin$ zpool status

  pool: mediapool

 state: ONLINE

  scan: none requested

config:

NAME        STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM

mediapool   ONLINE       0     0     0

  raidz2-0  ONLINE       0     0     0

    disk2   ONLINE       0     0     0

    disk3   ONLINE       0     0     0

    disk4   ONLINE       0     0     0

    disk5   ONLINE       0     0     0

    disk6   ONLINE       0     0     0

    disk7   ONLINE       0     0     0

errors: No known data errors

Riot-Nrrrds-Mac-mini:Downloads admin$ zfs list

NAME        USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT

mediapool  1.06M  7.02T   989K  /Volumes/Media

Levi Nilsson posted this 27 September 2020

Unfortunately, this is exactly why I will not be buying any Promise equipment in the future.  A RAID system is something that you EXPECT to be able to grow in the future and improve as the tech around you inproves.  To have Promise outright tell us that, even though they build a great product that is still functional after 10 years, they as a company have decided not to support it anymore and would instead like you to buy one of their newer (and more expensive) products instead.  I do not use the drive for active work.  It is an archiving and storage box.  You would do well to increase your loyalty base by continuing to support these legacy machines as long as the other hardware (connections, adaptations, CPU, etc.) are viable to operate with them.

Just because you say it is no longer a viable product does not mean a LOT of folks have them and continue to rely on them on a daily basis.  Show us some love for the thousands of dollars we invested with your company and help us keep these legady machines up and running!

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nicolas horne posted this 13 October 2020

If it is the former, then I know I have a disk size restriction I cannot get around.  If it is the latter, then there is a chance larger/newer drives would work - but you will not guarantee it.  Is that an accurate assessment?

 

Riot, did your excellent question ever get answered?
And did you (or anyone else!) get any success using larger drives?


nicolas horne posted this 22 December 2020

@Raghuraman, @Pradeep; if i use drives that are not in the compatibility list, will they most likely be outright rejected, or most likely cause instability or performance issues?

i inserted 8TB drives yesterday, that initially were reported as 'Pass Thru', but i could still configure them as a RAID5 array. 

it would also be super if anyone would share their findings on here,

..including where they found drives that work! :)

@Riot; did you have problems using those drives?

Oliver Huang posted this 25 December 2020

I am using @6 WD 6TB red drives in my Pegasus R6 RAID. No issues with MacPro and MacOS 10.14.6. I had two drives failures in the past. I was able to rebuld the RAID with new drives of the same model. It took two to three days to complete the rebuld. During that time, the drive was still working but slow. The "failed" hard drive seems work as an independent hard drive. I used it for keeping movies with no issue. I also checked wtih some hard drive utility app. No issues showed. But if I stick those drive back to the R6 bay, it will not let me to reuse them.

Does anyone know if this first generation Pegasus R6 is supported by MacOS 10.15 or 10.16? I used Aperture for all of my photography. I have a few big libraries which I am having trouble migrate them to Lightroom or to Photos. (That's a seperate pain issue. I don't want to lose edits, flag, color code and albums. Also i have no time to go though over 100,000 photos.) Becuase of that, I can't use MacOS 10.16. Because MacOS 10.16 stop supporting Aperture. But I wish to use MacOS 10.15 to sync iphones more reliable than iTune. Any one have tried MacOS 10.15? Thanks!

Riot Nrrrd posted this 25 December 2020

If it is the former, then I know I have a disk size restriction I cannot get around.  If it is the latter, then there is a chance larger/newer drives would work - but you will not guarantee it.  Is that an accurate assessment?

Riot, did your excellent question ever get answered?
And did you (or anyone else!) get any success using larger drives?

Nicolas,

My question never really got answered, no.  I still have the same 4 TB Toshiba drives installed in my R6.  I do not dare go beyond that size because of the lack-of-support issue.  I'm happy for Oliver Huang that his experiment using 6 TB Western Digital drives seems to be a success.

Also, in another thread on here, I detail how having to cut the power to a broken APC UPS recently caused my R6's PSU to fail, and Promise was of no help due to their "No support/EOL" stance.  I had to buy a used R6 as a replacement chassis to get things working again.

I won't put any larger drives into the R6 as a result - when it comes time to increase capacity, I'll buy a NAS and throw out the Pegasus R6.  No more being beholden to extinct technology (Thunderbolt 1) or a delicate PSU - or dependencies upon the host/OS. (I eventually plan to migrate to an Apple Silicon-based Mac mini running Big Sur - a combination which Promise doesn't support at all.)

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Oliver Huang posted this 25 December 2020

 

Happy holidays to you all!

I try to attach screen shots but didn't work. Here are the specs. Promise Utility version 4.04.0000.42 (C05). (Firmeware 5.04.0000.64 upgrade message keeps popping up. I can click upgrade anf finish cycle but nothing happens. Same feedback as others. No more firmware upgrades.) PDM Enabled, Media Patrol Enabled.  Avaiable RAID levels: 0, 5, 6, 10, 50, 1E, Total Physical Capacity 36.01TB, drive model number WDC WD60EFRX-68L, WD60EFAX-68S (replacement of failed drive) and WD60EFRX-68M (the last RAID drive added in slot 6).

My manual also says 4TB is the limit. I didn't know that limitation until I purchased this second hand case. Since it starts fresh, I manage to try with 6TB at the time. I have many other hard drives and have three sets of backups. But having a 6 plus disk RAID is far more secure than other methods. 

To answer your questions. I don't think upgrade 4TB to 6TB will be worth it. But upgrading from 1TB to 6TB is. Also it is much easier to backup all 5T of data somewhere first. Then stick in two or three 6TB drive in to start your raid. You can always add more hard drives in future. I will run out of space soon. That's why 10-16TB drives are interesting option. But if this unit can't support future MacOS or too slow, then it is better to keep as a secondary backup unit.

I understand software and hardware companies don't want to keep supporting old products. Apple is the number one company in this catagory. I found I couldn't even open old video files using apple's format these days. With photos and disk RAID, they are not games and utilities. They serve as archive. Companies shoud at least making them readable. Specially when Apple is making billions. How hard is to make all of their previous file format readable? How hard to allow people to read old photo libraries? Anyhow. No more bitching. We are here to discuss solutions. 

Cloud isn't an option for people like us. Our files are all too large. The speed is good for archive but not for daily use.

To be absolutely certain, we just have to make more moeny and move to new RAID. lol

 

Martin Jones posted this 12 June 2021

I have a Pegasus R6 v. A2 , Firmware 5.04.0000.61. Utility V 4.04.0000.42 (C05).

Out of curiosity, I put three 10TB and one 12TB drives (all I had lying around) into my R6.

Created a 30TB RAID 5 array with no problem. I've been copying gobs of data to it all day, just to see if I can break it. 

Seems fine. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. 

Matt Stamm posted this 19 February 2022

New user here but I installed (6) 10TB IronWolf Pro drives in a gen1 Pegasus R6 in mid-2020.  They are in RAID5 and have performed excellently.  

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