Promise Pegasus 2 and Windows 8.1

[mikes79]

Hello,

I recently received my Mac Pro Late 2013; I had planned on using a Promise Pegasus2 R4; with Windows and OS X; in order to supplement the SSD storage. Everything went fine with OS X. However after I got Windows 8 installed. The Promise box didn't work because a driver for it wasn't installed. It was listed under the 'Other Devices' section of the Device Manager as a RAID Controller. The process I am about to outline worked for me and so I thought I'd share.

I eventually got the promise to work in Windows 8.1 x64 by using this driver as a base:

http://promise.com/support/download_file.aspx?rsn=689&m=205&region=en-US

This driver uses the same controller chip and the same amount of RAM as the Pegasus2.

After downloading you will need to edit the following file: Open 'stexstpt' in a text editor.

Look for the [Promise.ntamd64] section of the file and add the following line below the header.

%stexYosemiteDesc%=stex_Inst,PCI\VEN_105A&DEV_8760

Save changes to the file.

In light of the fact that we modified the driver. We must tell Windows to accept unsigned drivers; (The drivers secure has no longer matches do to the fact that we modified the driver). To enable the installation of unsigned drivers follow the directions which are outlined here:

http://www.howtogeek.com/167723/how...8.1-so-that-you-can-install-unsigned-drivers/

After this process has been completed open the device manager and right click the RAID controller in the 'Other Devices' section.

Select 'Update driver Software'
Select 'Browse my computer for driver software'
Select 'Browse' button and navigate to the folder which contains the driver.
Select 'Next'

The driver will now be installed. The RAID Controller device will now be referred to as a 'Promise Supertrak SAS 6G RAID Controller' and two additional 'Promise RAID console' devices will be added as well. They will all be listed in the 'Storage controllers' section of the Device Manager.

Any any drives that you previously created within the Promise Utility and / or Disk Utility (From within OS X) will now be accessible from within Windows and con be covered over to NTFS at will.

This should satisfy anyone with similar needs until Promise releases a proper driver.

This has worked well for me so far and performance has been very good within both OSes; however if it causes adverse effects to your hardware or data; you shall assume all the risk. With that being said I hope this process helps someone.

M

 

[Mormith]

Thanks

Thank You for posting this. My Mac Pro will be shipped in March (hopefully) and I've been looking at the Promise Pegasus 2 as an enclosure to hold the HDs in my current Mac Pro, one of which is a Windows install. This information is very helpful. Thanks again.

 

[mikes79]

re:

You are very welcome. I am glad that you found it helpful. Things have been working just fine for me so far.

M

 

[Halon]

Disk Drives

Hello,

I recently received my Mac Pro Late 2013; I had planned on using a Promise Pegasus2 R4; with Windows and OS X; in order to supplement the SSD storage. Everything went fine with OS X. However after I got Windows 8 installed. The Promise box didn't work because a driver for it wasn't installed. It was listed under the 'Other Devices' section of the Device Manager as a RAID Controller. The process I am about to outline worked for me and so I thought I'd share.

I eventually got the promise to work in Windows 8.1 x64 by using this driver as a base:

http://promise.com/support/download_file.aspx?rsn=689&m=205&region=en-US

This driver uses the same controller chip and the same amount of RAM as the Pegasus2.

After downloading you will need to edit the following file: Open 'stexstpt' in a text editor.

Look for the [Promise.ntamd64] section of the file and add the following line below the header.

%stexYosemiteDesc%=stex_Inst,PCI\VEN_105A&DEV_8760

Save changes to the file.

In light of the fact that we modified the driver. We must tell Windows to accept unsigned drivers; (The drivers secure has no longer matches do to the fact that we modified the driver). To enable the installation of unsigned drivers follow the directions which are outlined here:

http://www.howtogeek.com/167723/how...8.1-so-that-you-can-install-unsigned-drivers/

After this process has been completed open the device manager and right click the RAID controller in the 'Other Devices' section.

Select 'Update driver Software'
Select 'Browse my computer for driver software'
Select 'Browse' button and navigate to the folder which contains the driver.
Select 'Next'

The driver will now be installed. The RAID Controller device will now be referred to as a 'Promise Supertrak SAS 6G RAID Controller' and two additional 'Promise RAID console' devices will be added as well. They will all be listed in the 'Storage controllers' section of the Device Manager.

Any any drives that you previously created within the Promise Utility and / or Disk Utility (From within OS X) will now be accessible from within Windows and con be covered over to NTFS at will.

This should satisfy anyone with similar needs until Promise releases a proper driver.

This has worked well for me so far and performance has been very good within both OSes; however if it causes adverse effects to your hardware or data; you shall assume all the risk. With that being said I hope this process helps someone.

M

I have a few questions about your Pegasus R4 if you don't mind.

Did you buy the diskless R4? If so what drives did you buy? Any issues with the selected drives?

I chatted to a Pegasus rep and asked them if they supported Windows and I got a vague response. If you use bootcamp then probably. He seemed unsure.

Did you use Bootcamp to load windows or another method? Do you think Pegasus will eventually provide an updated driver?

Thanks for your post. I have previously asked in other Pegasus threads if anyone had installed Windows and yours is the first positive response.

 

[mikes79]

re:

To Answer Your questions:

1) Yes I bought the diskless version at store.apple.com I bought the drives shown here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00EIQTKAS/ref=oh_details_o03_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Not listed as compatible, however they seem to work, just fine.

2) Yes I used bootcamp to install windows. Nothing special about the windows install. I believe that promise will eventually provide a proper driver; most of their other products have one after all. Further Thunderbolt is becoming more and more common on windows workstations from HP and Dell.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

M

 

[Halon]

To Answer Your questions:

1) Yes I bought the diskless version at store.apple.com I bought the drives shown here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00EIQTKAS/ref=oh_details_o03_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Not listed as compatible, however they seem to work, just fine.

2) Yes I used bootcamp to install windows. Nothing special about the windows install. I believe that promise will eventually provide a proper driver; most of their other products have one after all. Further Thunderbolt is becoming more and more common on windows workstations from HP and Dell.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

M

M

Thanks for the quick response and the info on your drives, that looks like an ideal solution and should be fast given their hybrids.

Curious how you set up the Pegasus. Did you set up a raid for OSX and then a separate disk for Bootcamp or go with JBOD?

My Mac Pro is not due in until March so i maybe back with additional questions.

Thanks Again

H

 

[mikes79]

re:

M

Thanks for the quick response and the info on your drives, that looks like an ideal solution and should be fast given their hybrids.

Curious how you set up the Pegasus. Did you set up a raid for OSX and then a separate disk for Bootcamp or go with JBOD?

My Mac Pro is not due in until March so i maybe back with additional questions.

Thanks Again

H

I didn't setup any Arrays or Logical drives within the promise utility at all, because I'm not interested in a RAID setup at home; since I wanted JBOD, I just formatted all four drives with disk utility. Three were GPT / HFS for OS X and the forth was MBR / FAT32. I switched the MBR drive to NTFS from within windows, since OS X can't format NTFS.

M

 

[hfg]

I didn't setup any Arrays or Logical drives within the promise utility at all, because I'm not interested in a RAID setup at home; since I wanted JBOD, I just formatted all four drives with disk utility. Three were GPT / HFS for OS X and the forth was MBR / FAT32. I switched the MBR drive to NTFS from within windows, since OS X can't format NTFS.

M

Am I reading this correctly that you are booting Windows from a disk in the Pegasus2 R4 (as BootCamp) ... or are you running BootCamp from a partition on the internal SSD and using the Pegasus hosted drive as a NTFS windows data drive?

Thanks ...

 

[mikes79]

re:

Am I reading this correctly that you are booting Windows from a disk in the Pegasus2 R4 (as BootCamp) ... or are you running BootCamp from a partition on the internal SSD and using the Pegasus hosted drive as a NTFS windows data drive?

Thanks ...

I am not booting windows via a drive in the pegasus, I current just have an ntfs data drive in the pegasus and I access it while booted from within windows from the internal SSD.

However with that being said I am confident that you could boot windows from the pegasus if you took the following steps:

1) Install windows as normal.
2) Install driver noted above (or the 'proper' one in the future)
3) Reboot into OS X and use Winclone to create an image of your windows partition.
4) Restore the win clone image to the Pegasus.
5) Delete windows from internal SSD.
6) Boot windows from the pegasus as normal.

This works because Thunderbolt is a much lower level interface and is not reinitialized during the boot process of the windows kernel.

I have read in numerous places that this works; however I have little interest in trying it. I do however recommend that you backup your Windows partition with Winclone; this is always a good idea.....

M

 

[hfg]

I am not booting windows via a drive in the pegasus, I current just have an ntfs data drive in the pegasus and I access it while booted from within windows from the internal SSD.

However with that being said I am confident that you could boot windows from the pegasus if you took the following steps:

1) Install windows as normal.
2) Install driver noted above (or the 'proper' one in the future)
3) Reboot into OS X and use Winclone to create an image of your windows partition.
4) Restore the win clone image to the Pegasus.
5) Delete windows from internal SSD.
6) Boot windows from the pegasus as normal.

This works because Thunderbolt is a much lower level interface and is not reinitialized during the boot process of the windows kernel.

I have read in numerous places that this works; however I have little interest in trying it. I do however recommend that you backup your Windows partition with Winclone; this is always a good idea.....

M

Thank you for the information.

I have used that technique often with a variety of Thunderbolt enclosures to create external Windows boot with mixed success. Many Thunderbolt enclosures do not boot Windows, at least not on a Mac! I have been looking for a multi-drive Thunderbolt JBOD enclosure with the desire to allocate 1 or 2 disk (SSD) positions for Windows and the remainder for RAID OS X disks.

-howard

 

[bomberaia]

I have a Mac Pro with 4 drives, Mac OSX, Windows 7 & 2 drives for backup. Can I use my Windows drive with nMP? What do I need to do to use it?

 

[mikes79]

re:

I have a Mac Pro with 4 drives, Mac OSX, Windows 7 & 2 drives for backup. Can I use my Windows drive with nMP? What do I need to do to use it?

Windows 7 is not supported on the new mac pro, so at minimum you'd have too upgrade to windows 8.1. Sadly….then there are numerous ways which you could use the drive.

M

 

[bjm1175]

Pegasus 2 NTFS

Hi,

I have the Mac Pro late 2013 with Pegasus 2 R4. I am using bootcamp with Windows 8.1 and have successfully got Windows to see the Pegasus drive but now I cannot format NTFS. I have followed the guidance to the letter in the initial post and so far so good but defeated in being able to format NTFS. Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[mikes79]

re:

I am not in front of Windows at the moment and so I can give you exact directions; however I just used the Windows Disk Manager Service to format one of my drives as NTFS.

I believe it can be found in the Control Panels>Administrative Tasks>Disk Management. (Or something very similar.) Windows will then scan all your disks and any can be right clicked and converted over to NTFS.

M

 

[mikes79]

re:

Hello,

I just wanted to let everyone know that Promise released a proper Windows driver today; for the entire Pegasus2 line:

Driver:

http://promise.com/support/download_file.aspx?rsn=1652&m=205&region=en-US

Utility:

http://promise.com/support/download_file.aspx?rsn=1638&m=205&region=en-US

enjoy,

M

I am not in front of Windows at the moment and so I can give you exact directions; however I just used the Windows Disk Manager Service to format one of my drives as NTFS.

I believe it can be found in the Control Panels>Administrative Tasks>Disk Management. (Or something very similar.) Windows will then scan all your disks and any can be right clicked and converted over to NTFS.

M

 

[jyavenard]

I am not booting windows via a drive in the pegasus, I current just have an ntfs data drive in the pegasus and I access it while booted from within windows from the internal SSD.

However with that being said I am confident that you could boot windows from the pegasus if you took the following steps:

1) Install windows as normal.
2) Install driver noted above (or the 'proper' one in the future)
3) Reboot into OS X and use Winclone to create an image of your windows partition.
4) Restore the win clone image to the Pegasus.
5) Delete windows from internal SSD.
6) Boot windows from the pegasus as normal.

This works because Thunderbolt is a much lower level interface and is not reinitialized during the boot process of the windows kernel.

I have read in numerous places that this works; however I have little interest in trying it. I do however recommend that you backup your Windows partition with Winclone; this is always a good idea.....

M

Hi.

Just a note that this doesn't work...

I've tried everything I could think of, and I'm yet to be able to boot windows using a disk in the R4 (be it jbod, raid or passthrough).

My last attempt was extracting the drivers so windows installer could use them , and directly booting the windows 8.1 installation disk.
I then loaded the drivers so I could select the Pegasus disk as installation. From that point on, windows 8.1 installer states that you can't install windows on that disk because the bios can't boot it and it should be activated in the bios...

Very unhappy so far.... several hours spent without much luck

I had really hoped I could boot windows from the pegasus2