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Pegasus2 R4 vs first gen
I edit for a small production house and we are looking upgrading some of our gear. One of the potential configurations involves the new Mac Pro and a Thunderbolt array. I’ve been looking at the offerings from Promise and have been leaning toward the R6. I’m a bit curious about the R4 though. It would certainly suit us as far as capacity and the price is nice, but I’m concerned with it’s potential performance. I know that it isn’t as fast as the R6 when both are in RAID 5, and that more drives generally leads to a faster RAID. We shoot XDCAM 1080p30 and don’t do much multi-cam at all. Would the R4 work for us? Also, will Thunderbolt 2 offer any kind of benefit to the R4? Thanks.
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4 Replies
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4 drive RAID arrays will not benefit from Thunderbolt 2, you would be getting the same performance. That is because most single 6G SATA hard drives average data speed is 150-180MB/s and up to 200MB/s on the higher end drives. Let’s say 4 drives gives you a theoretical total max transfer rate of 800MB/s, but would likely see somewhere between 400-600MBs in RAID 5 configs depending on the RAID controller used. Although Thunderbolt 2 provides enough bandwith, you’re limted by the drive speed.
But hey, anyone with a Pegasus2 R4 please feel free to post some benchmark test! I on the other hand would be more interested in seeing the TB2 R8 performace.
Ricardo Reyes
Areca Technologies – US Channel
Ricardo@ArecaUS.com
http://www.Areca.com.tw***** RAID is not a substitute for proper and regular backups *****
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Thanks, Ricardo. So really even a 6 drive array in RAID 5 probably wouldn’t need Thunderbolt 2 either, correct? I suppose TB2 would only come into play if I were daisy-chaining 2 or more arrays.
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That’s correct. The 8 bay is another story. Most likely why Promise introduced the R8 with TB2. I can’t say what speeds you would get with the new Pegasus R8. But we’ve been testing another 8 bay Thunderbolt 2 storage and have seen 1200-1400MB/s speeds in RAID 5. Who would have thought 1200MB/s transfer rates on a rMacbook Pro. =)
However, current 8 bay Thunderbolt 1 storage is more than enough for most users at 700-800MB/s.
As far as daisy chaining 4 or 6 bay units to increase performance, you would run into the same limitation since you can’t span arrays across controllers. (unless in a software RAID environment, but not recomended) So you would be running 2 separate 4 drive RAID arrays.
Ricardo Reyes
Areca Technologies – US Channel
Ricardo@ArecaUS.com
http://www.Areca.com.tw***** RAID is not a substitute for proper and regular backups *****
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Stumbled across this (https://hamed.dk/blog/101-pegasus-r4-r6-review?start=1) when doing some research around differences between R4 and R6, thought you might find it interesting. I’m leaning towards the R6 for performance and longevity.
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