Promise Pegasus3 R4 12TB or 16TB

[bina]

Hi There

Looking to buy a Promise Pegasus 3 R4 MAC version storage unit to accompany my 2018 MBP or iMAC. Was looking to buy a 2015 MBP but now maybe a newer one. I heard these are very reliable. The 12TB is @ $1200 and the 16TB is @ $1700. Would you spend the extra $500 for a 16TB over a 12TB? With the Thunderbolt 3 connection how long will this device last? Five years? I know you have to update computers every 5 but what about external drives? Just wondering.

Thanks in advance.

 

[HDFan]

Pegasus is a premium product, which really shows in their disk drive pricing. $500 for 4 TB increase is rather expensive. Simplistically a 4 TB drive costs $121, so you are paying almost a $380 premium when you go from 4 x 3 to 4 x 4. When the cylinder MacPro came out they offered a diskless R4, which meant that you could populate with your own drives. Don't think that is an option anymore. Things that you need to evaluate:

1. How much disk space do you actually need?
2. How will your needs change over time? When would you outgrow the 12 TB?
3. How important is it for you to have full Pegasus support? (It is awesome, by the way)
4. Eventually your drives will start failing. The exact times depends upon how they are used, the drive manufacturer, environmental conditions, etc. Could be a month, could be 5+ years.
5. Pegasus maintains a list of compatible, tested drives on their website.

Due to the prohibitive cost of a Pegasus 2 R6 6 x 6 I initially went with a 6 x 2 tb. When funds became available I upgraded to 6 TB drives on their supported list. As for longevity I have had other RAID enclosures fail. My R6 is about 3 years old with the only issue of a disk failure within a week of delivery. It was quickly handled by their support. Others may comment on their experiences.

 

[ssmed]

Hi There

Looking to buy a Promise Pegasus 3 R4 MAC version storage unit to accompany my 2018 MBP or iMAC. Was looking to buy a 2015 MBP but now maybe a newer one. I heard these are very reliable. The 12TB is @ $1200 and the 16TB is @ $1700. Would you spend the extra $500 for a 16TB over a 12TB? With the Thunderbolt 3 connection how long will this device last? Five years? I know you have to update computers every 5 but what about external drives? Just wondering.

Thanks in advance.

This may be no help, but I have a 6 year old R6 which is just becoming unreliable after 24/7 use since owned. They do not ship with drives that last forever and I have replaced a disk individually twice and the whole set once to increase from 12 to 24TB. Highly recommended. I have been using long fibre/light TB collections to keep the disks at a distance in the cool and secure which I would also recommend, although these are I think only TB1 and TH2. We have another R6 and a TB2 R4 as well with no problems.