#Promise pegasus2 r6 review mac os x
#Promise pegasus2 r6 review drivers
#Promise pegasus2 r6 review pro
#Promise pegasus2 r6 review software

We used our standard drag-and-drop test of a 1.2 GB folder, and the Pegasus R6 took six seconds! Compare that to the Editors' Choice winning 1TB Iomega eGo Blackbelt ($199.99 list, 4 stars) which took at 35 seconds under USB 2.0 and 22 seconds with FireWire 800.

#Promise pegasus2 r6 review pro

It's so fast that it beats the internal solid-state drive (SSD) in an Apple MacBook Pro in speed and throughput tests. The Pegasus R6 using the Thunderbolt interface is fast. Here's the reason you're considering this drive in the first place: performance.

#Promise pegasus2 r6 review drivers

There are no shipping Windows PCs with the mini-DisplayPort shaped Thunderbolt port, and there are no Windows drivers for the R6 on Windows, even in Boot Camp. The drive is not Windows compatible at this time. You could theoretically house a massive database or Website on the drive as well, but there aren't any servers or workstations with Thunderbolt, at least until Apple updates the Mac Pro with a Thunderbolt port. Most users will likely use the drive as a project work drive for high-end tasks: using programs like Photoshop, Premiere Pro, or Final Cut Pro/ Pro X.

#Promise pegasus2 r6 review mac os x

The drive is formatted HFS+, the Mac OS X native format, and as such it can be used as a Time Machine backup drive out of the box, though that would make it a very expensive 12TB backup drive. As with all RAID devices, I'd recommend backing up your data elsewhere before changing RAID configs, as the process usually entails formatting the drive.

#Promise pegasus2 r6 review software

The Pegasus R6 comes with only one piece of software on board: a controller program that can monitor the health of the RAID array and reconfigure it based on your needs. (RAID 0, 6, and 10 are the available configurations). If you really need to get all the performance and drive space you can out of the Pegasus R6, you can set the RAID level to 0, but if any drive physically fails, you'll lose all your data. The six-drive array gives you 10TB instead of the nominal 12TB as a result of the extra data parity files, but that's still a good tradeoff.

You can replace the bad drive while the unit is operating and rebuild the array on the fly, so there's virtually no down time. RAID 5 basically gives you one-drive failure protection: If one of the hard drives physically fails, the data parity files on the remaining drives allow you to keep working until you replace the bad drive. (For more on the difference between RAID configurations, check out our primer on RAID, RAID Levels Explained. RAID 5 (striping and data parity) gives the user a lot of benefits: some speed, bulletproof data protection, and hot swap capability. The Pegasus R6 is set for RAID 5 out of the box, and that's how we tested the drive.

Unfortunately, the Apple Thunderbolt cable isn't included with the Pegasus R6 or R4. That's a total three screens and 121 TB of drive space for $28,273 before tax (including twelve $49 Thunderbolt cables and a 27-inch iMac).

Theoretically, you could have 12 Pegasus R6 drives and two 24- or 27-inch Cinema displays connected to your 27-inch iMac. This goes double for an iMac 27-inch with two Thunderbolt ports. You can also plug a mini-DisplayPort monitor into the Thunderbolt port on the back of the Pegasus R6, so you can use the drive and a monitor simultaneously with only one connection. Six Pegasus R6 arrays will give you about 60 TB of data storage, connected through one Thunderbolt port. The two Thunderbolt ports are versatile: they pass data through, so you can daisy chain up to six Pegasus R6 (or R4) drives together.

Best Hosted Endpoint Protection and Security Software.