Pegasus 2 R4 8TB upgrade to 12TB (best drives?)

  • 2.2K Views
  • Last Post 2 weeks ago
  • Topic Is Solved
Jeremy Huff posted this 02 December 2024

Hello,

I've been using my Pegasus 2 R4 8TB (Raid0) for the last 10 years and it's been incredibly solid for everyday use. I'm a video editor and also use it to back up photos, home videos, etc....   I've only had 1 drive fail and did not lose any data that Im aware of. I don't want to press my luck and need to replace ASAP.

I'd like to upgrade the R4 to 12TB but it seems all the tested drives from the link below have all been discontinued. Has anyone recently upgraded using a newer SATA III 3.5 3TB HDD? Any suggestions to a drive that would be compatible? Do I need to stick to 3TB or can I drop a 4TB drive into the array and still have it function properly.

http://promise.com/DownloadFile.aspx?DownloadFileUID=4279

Could this drive work for my needs?
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?q=Seagate%203.5&filters=fct_capacity_844%3A3tb

 

Huge thanks in advance for any guidance.

 

Jeremy

Order By: Standard | Latest | Votes
R P posted this 02 December 2024

Hi Jeremy,

The Pegasus 2 was first sold in 2013 if memory serves. All the drives tested with it are most likely long out of production.

I'm not sure of the maximum size drive that will work, but the compatibility guide will show you the largest drive tested, that's the most useful information in it today. I recall some forum posters say thay have use 8TB drives.

The general recommendation is to buy a new drive, preferably from the same manufacturer with the same spindle speed, which will be 7200 RPM. Of course you can use any drive manufacturer, there are only a few left today, but drives from the same manufacturer are more likely to have similar characteristics, which helps the raid set work better.

The drive you selected is not a good choice.

This drive is 5400 RPM, you don't want to mix a 5400 RPM drive in a RAID set with 7200 RPM drives.

If you were to replace all the drives and make a new RAID, you could use this drive. But the Pegasus will be slower and may not be fast enough for video work.

 

  • Liked by
  • Jeremy Huff
Jeremy Huff posted this 02 December 2024

Thanks for the quick reply RP!

Apologies, my original post was not clear.

I plan to updgrade ALL 4 drives making it a 12TB array (or 16TB?) Currently my Pegasus 2 R4 is confugured with 4x2TB drives. Can it be configured to 16TB?

Would these drives below be a good option? 

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1770084-REG/seagate_4tb_ironwolf_pro_7200.html

I'd really like to continue using my Pegasus 2 for back ups, photos and such. Hoping I can just continue using the latest drives available or if this particular model is soon to be obsolete?   

Thanks again!

Jeremy

 

R P posted this 02 December 2024

Hi Jeremy,

The 4TB Ironwolf drives should work.

And a 16TB array should be fine, in RAID5 you should have a 12TB Volume.

  • Liked by
  • Jeremy Huff
Jeremy Huff posted this 11 July 2025

Hello RP,

Back again after finally moving forward with this. 

Last night I left replaced all my old 2TB drives with 4TB Ironwolf HDD's inside my Pegasus2 R4 enclosure.
https://www.microcenter.com/product/690298/seagate-ironwolf-4tb-5400-rpm-sata-iii-6gb-s-35-internal-nas-cmr-hard-drive

I used the Promise Utility app wizard to format a raid5 array and it took all night to build, finally finishing around 9am this morning. The Promise Utility app recognizes all 4 drives and all appear to be up and running however my 2020, M1 macbook air (Sequoia 15.4.1) will not mount the disk. Disk Utility also recognizes the drive but I am unable to mount/unmount it.

When I restart my computer asks to initialize but I've ignored that prompt.

Before I replaced the drives the raid was mounting without issue.

The drives initally were set to pass thru and I changed all to unconfigured before formatting the drives. 

I have uninstalled the DEX driver and reinstalled it to no avail. 

 

What am I missing?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. 

 

Thank you,
Jeremy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

R P posted this 11 July 2025

 Hi Jeremy,

If you used the Wizard Automatic option it will create the array, a RAID5 LUN and put an HFS+ filesyetem on it. I'm not sure if the other Wizard options (Advanced and Express) put a filesystem on the LUN.

If Disk Utility shows a 12TB LUN with no filesystem on it, you'll need to use the Disk Utility Erase option to put a filesystem in it, do not create an APFS filesystem, the HFS+ filesystem is called 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)' by Disk Utility.

  • Liked by
  • Johan Hegge
Daniel O'Leary posted this 2 weeks ago

I was able to install six 10 TB HDs into a friend's Pegasus2 R6 enclosure and get it to work with both my M4Max Macbook Pro 15, a 2011 iMac 27, and his Intel Xeon based Mac Pro - the cylinder style version that was released at the same time as the enclosure. I made sure that I had installed the latest firmware in the enclosure, and the latest drivers and Pegasus utility software in all of the Macs. 

There was an issue with my friend's Mac Pro at first, that I worked around by doing some things on my iMac, but I cannot recall the specifics (I think.it involved updating the Pegasus firmware). The 3 computers have such different OSs (from high Sierra to Sequoia) that it is hard to say if the problem was hardware, installer app, or OS related, but once the work-around was accomplished, there were no other issues. If I recall correctly, I let the "wizard" do the default settings, and then used Apple's Disk Utility to format the array. 

 

I am preparing to install a set of eight of similar drives into my own empty Pegasus2 R8 enclosure, and am wondering if I should get the 4Kn or the 512e disks, given my different use cases. The array will be primarily connected to the 2011 iMac 27, but could see some action on my MBP, and whatever I chose to relplace the iMac with at some point in the future.

Hello RP,

Back again after finally moving forward with this. 

Last night I left replaced all my old 2TB drives with 4TB Ironwolf HDD's inside my Pegasus2 R4 enclosure.
https://www.microcenter.com/product/690298/seagate-ironwolf-4tb-5400-rpm-sata-iii-6gb-s-35-internal-nas-cmr-hard-drive

I used the Promise Utility app wizard to format a raid5 array and it took all night to build, finally finishing around 9am this morning. The Promise Utility app recognizes all 4 drives and all appear to be up and running however my 2020, M1 macbook air (Sequoia 15.4.1) will not mount the disk. Disk Utility also recognizes the drive but I am unable to mount/unmount it.

When I restart my computer asks to initialize but I've ignored that prompt.

Before I replaced the drives the raid was mounting without issue.

The drives initally were set to pass thru and I changed all to unconfigured before formatting the drives. 

I have uninstalled the DEX driver and reinstalled it to no avail. 

 

What am I missing?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. 

 

Thank you,
Jeremy

R P posted this 2 weeks ago

Hi Daniel,

If I recall correctly, I let the "wizard" do the default settings, and then used Apple's Disk Utility to format the array. 

The Wizard Automatic option does everything, including putting an HFS+ filesystem on the LUN and naming the Volume as the Pegasus model you have.

I am preparing to install a set of eight of similar drives into my own empty Pegasus2 R8 enclosure, and am wondering if I should get the 4Kn or the 512e disks, given my different use cases.

You'll do best to get the 512e disks. 4Kn is not supported. 

Be advised that to work properly with an Apple Silicon Mac, a Pegasus1 or Pegasus2 will have to be updated to the latest firmware. The issues range from not being seen at all on the M series Mac to random disconnects and the Volume not mounting after reboot. 

 

Search
Categories
Close