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macOS 10.11.6 Issue with Pegasus?
Related: Apple, Apple Core Rot, Apple macOS, Other World Computing, RAID, SoftRAID
William R writes:
Followed this site for years. Thought you might warn others using Promise RAID drives.
Recently updated perfectly running MacBook Pro to Yosemite because it is required to run Capture One 9. Attached Promise Pegasus 6 indicated firmware upgrade recommended after Yosemite upgrade. Did so and drive malfunctioned. Note a “voltage #3” parameter went critical immediately after the firmware upgrade. I was told incremental upgrades of firmware were necessary. I pointed out that it did not say that in release instructions. Also learned Promise has no repair facility and quite honestly they don’t care that their upgrade caused the problem. “So sad, too bad”.
Luckily when the drives were placed in another unit all the data is safe and uncorrupted. I have attached a copy of the interface with tech “UNsupport” so you can judge for yourself. I am sure there are better RAID companies out there and this chaos caused by the Apple OS X “upgrades” must stop!! Please warn others.
MPG: I foreswore Promise Technology after the sh*ttiest tech support experience ever. If free, I would not use their products. But of course Apple Core Rot is of concern, constantly breaking things, so Apple bears part of the blame for this type of thing.
My advice to William R is to remove the drives, buy an OWC Thunderbay 4, and then enjoy the combination of a sledgehammer and the Promise Pegasus 6 case near a dumpster. MPG has NEVER had to update firmware with the OWC Thunderbay 4. Five of them run without a hitch, for nearly two years now.
A short snippet from Promise Technology “support”, from William R’s attachment:
As we discussed on call a week ago, before update the firmware you should confirm the current firmware version and same would have been checked with Promise Technical Support to proceed further. As we discussed earlier the product is out of warranty and doesn't have any repair center available.
...
We have checked the mac system profiler.The Pegasus is connected to the mac machine. Please generate the subsystem report of the unit and attach it.You need to execute all the commands one by one and attach it here.
Please note that unit is not under warranty,you will be charged for the support if you need any further assistance.
WTF? And Apple still sells this wonderful experience to this very day? (just checked the Apple Store).
David K writes:
I must say in my situation (Pegasus2 6, updating OSX from 10.11.5 to 10.11.6, updating firmware after someting like 2 years), everything went fine. The Pegasus utility first updated itself, than the firmware. Allthough I was unusually carefull updating after reading Your post. I have my unit for something like 2 years and until now it runs perfect.
MPG: the nature of some bugs is that they sometimes happen, and sometimes do not.
Tim Standing of SoftRAID writes:
You might also want to let your users know that they can reconfigure their Pegasus RAID systems to JBOD and then create a SoftRAID volume using the disks in the Pegasus. We have many customers who have done this and all our happy they did. They gain all the reliability of SoftRAID, our advanced disk monitoring and our excellent tech support all without having to buy new hardware. Our rebuilds are also much faster than those of a Pegasus. Rebuilding a Pegasus after replacing a 6 TB disk takes almost 2 days, with SoftRAID, it is less than 12 hours. Users do however have to copy the data off the Pegasus before turning it into a JBOD, but that's a one time job.
MPG: Sounds like a good idea. MPG uses SoftRAID, see more on SoftRAID.
