MP 7,1 So what are your thoughts on the Promise Pegasus R4i?

[realLucaR]

I recently bought another Mac Pro (8-Core, 96GB, 8TB Apple SSD, Pro Vega II, Afterburner) and it came with a Promise Pegasus R4i with 32TB of HDD storage.

I am planning on selling my other Mac Pro, and put the 12-Core CPU from that into this Mac Pro, since the one I just bought is a newer production date and also has the original box + better condition.

Anyways, I am now wondering what I should do with The Promise Pegasus R4i. My 6TB external HDD is almost full, and I need an upgrade anyways, so I might as well just use the R4i since I already have it now.

My only concern is the fact that it only works on the 2019 Mac Pro, and I am not sure how hard it will be to transfer everything over to a Mac Pro M2 Ultra or a Mac Studio in the future.

The Pegasus R4i is going for 1500 Euros on eBay though in Germany, so now I don't know what to do. I could also sell it and buy a RAID LaCie instead.

What would you do?

 

[SDAVE]

I recently bought another Mac Pro (8-Core, 96GB, 8TB Apple SSD, Pro Vega II, Afterburner) and it came with a Promise Pegasus R4i with 32TB of HDD storage.

I am planning on selling my other Mac Pro, and put the 12-Core CPU from that into this Mac Pro, since the one I just bought is a newer production date and also has the original box + better condition.

Anyways, I am now wondering what I should do with The Promise Pegasus R4i. My 6TB external HDD is almost full, and I need an upgrade anyways, so I might as well just use the R4i since I already have it now.

My only concern is the fact that it only works on the 2019 Mac Pro, and I am not sure how hard it will be to transfer everything over to a Mac Pro M2 Ultra or a Mac Studio in the future.

The Pegasus R4i is going for 1500 Euros on eBay though in Germany, so now I don't know what to do. I could also sell it and buy a RAID LaCie instead.

What would you do?

I mean what can you do with dated hardware? If you can sell it for 1500 euros sell that thing and do an external NAS via 10GbE (Mac Pro 2019 has dual 10GbE ports) and you will get external NAS with more storage with RAID5 (which is what I usually use).

Your other option is if you need faster storage, get a PCIe NVME card and pop in a 1-4 drives on it and enjoy the ride. However, NVMe and RAM prices are insane right now (compared to spinning hard drives) and you won't get near the 32TB of space you have now. With an external NAS you can.

Also the nice thing with a NAS (like a Synology one) I have the 6 bay version with a 10GbE addon PCIe card, and its been running great for years. I can share across different devices via wired/wifi, run many tasks, plex server, video/music streamer, and many other things. The biggest upside here with external storage has always been that if I replace my main computer, the NAS stays the same, so I don't have to reply to internal storage.

 

[realLucaR]

I mean what can you do with dated hardware? If you can sell it for 1500 euros sell that thing and do an external NAS via 10GbE (Mac Pro 2019 has dual 10GbE ports) and you will get external NAS with more storage with RAID5 (which is what I usually use).

Your other option is if you need faster storage, get a PCIe NVME card and pop in a 1-4 drives on it and enjoy the ride. However, NVMe and RAM prices are insane right now (compared to spinning hard drives) and you won't get near the 32TB of space you have now. With an external NAS you can.

Also the nice thing with a NAS (like a Synology one) I have the 6 bay version with a 10GbE addon PCIe card, and its been running great for years. I can share across different devices via wired/wifi, run many tasks, plex server, video/music streamer, and many other things. The biggest upside here with external storage has always been that if I replace my main computer, the NAS stays the same, so I don't have to reply to internal storage.

Good advice. The 10GbE connection would be great as well, I agree.

NVMes are not really ideal for storing important data, I still do not fully trust SSDs with data that hasn't been backed up otherwise since there is no way of repairing a broken SSD.

I am strongly considering Synology right now. It would also allow me to play movies I downloaded (legally of course hehe) on my Apple Tv and Vision Pro. Good idea actually..

If I do decide to keep the R4i though in case it does not sell for a price I'd accept, is it still good for use in 2026? How hard will it be to move data from the R4i once I upgrade the Mac one day?

 

[bmoraski]

However, NVMe and RAM prices are insane right now (compared to spinning hard drives) and you won't get near the 32TB of space you have now. With an external NAS you can.

It is absolutely insane ! A 4TB that i bought six months ago is now 4 to 5 times the price. Unfortunately my son has finally decided to set up a NAS and instead of listening to Dad and setting up when i suggested, he is now going to feel the pain of current pricing on all the hardware.