Promise Debuts 4X Thunderbolt RAID Box

By Douglas Perry
published

Promise Technology announced a smaller version of its Pegasus RAID storage box that integrates 2.5-inch hard drives as well as Thunderbolt connectivity.

The company said that it will be offering several versions starting with at least four 250 GB hard drives in a shell that is slightly smaller than a Mac mini computer. The drives can be upgraded by the owners later on, if they wish to do so.

What makes the J4 box interesting is its Thunderbolt interface, which will enable data transfer rates of up to 700 MB/s in read processes if equipped with SSDs. The device also supports daisy-chaining via a second Thunderbolt port. While the initial version of the J4 is exclusively targeting Mac devices, Promise said that it has plans for a Windows version as well.

According to the manufacturer, the device is scheduled to become available in June of this year. There was no information how much the J4 will cost.

Douglas Perry
21 Comments Comment from the forums
  • halcyon
    Awesome.
    Reply
  • neoverdugo
    So, whats the price tag?
    Reply
  • freggo
    Interesting. Hope they will offer a PC version without drives.
    No point in wasting money on four 250GB drives just to replace them with something 'better' :-)

    Reply
  • bloc97
    Is that drive box small? It seems that it only accept 1.7" drives?
    Reply
  • amythompson172
    How much is it...?

    http://goo.gl/W94VJ
    Reply
  • Zeppelingcdm
    Read an article in Popular Mechanics where they tested Thunderbolt against USB 2.0 and 3.0. To sum it up Apple has hyped the Thunderbolt way past real world speeds. Basically their blowing smoke up our asses once again. Thunderbolt came in above USB 2.0 but just barely passed USB 3.0 by 2.2 seconds. Add in the extra cost of having thunderbolt and the value is not really there. (The transfers were done to and from an SSD equipped Macbook Air for those who might be wondering.) Thought I'd share :)
    Reply
  • joytech22
    amythompson172How much is it...?http://goo.gl/W94VJHow much is it? I don't quite think you belong on a hardware forum methinks. lol.

    Hopefully they release ones with larger capacities or just leave them empty and let end users throw their own in.
    Reply
  • jamesedgeuk2000
    ZeppelingcdmRead an article in Popular Mechanics where they tested Thunderbolt against USB 2.0 and 3.0. To sum it up Apple has hyped the Thunderbolt way past real world speeds. Basically their blowing smoke up our asses once again. Thunderbolt came in above USB 2.0 but just barely passed USB 3.0 by 2.2 seconds. Add in the extra cost of having thunderbolt and the value is not really there. (The transfers were done to and from an SSD equipped Macbook Air for those who might be wondering.) Thought I'd share
    Thunderbolt is theoretically 2x as fast as USB 3.0, (its more like 2.2x in real world due to USB overheads) if your using a HDD with 90MB/s transfer speeds it wont make a difference, if your using a RAID array like being discussed here then TB is a big advantage over USB 3.0 bottlenecks.
    Reply
  • I read that Popular Mechanics article about thunderbolt, i was surprise that Firewire 800 transferred the same amount of time as USB 2.0. But then again, i have an iBook G4 with Firewire 400 that takes twice the time than USB 2.0 backing up, so i shouldn't be too surprised. Then again, i should be optimistic with tunderbolt, because it was created by intel not apple (apple created Firewire).
    Reply
  • Zeppelingcdm
    jamesedgeuk2000Thunderbolt is theoretically 2x as fast as USB 3.0, (its more like 2.2x in real world due to USB overheads) if your using a HDD with 90MB/s transfer speeds it wont make a difference, if your using a RAID array like being discussed here then TB is a big advantage over USB 3.0 bottlenecks.
    Do you mean to say USB "2.0" Because if not your response doesn't make much sense. The article I read put TB head to head with USB 2 & 3.0. TB only finished transferring the file 2.2 seconds faster than USB 3.0. That is nowhere near 2.2x or even 2x faster than USB 3.0. This was a actual speed test done by transferring files to an SSD Macbook, so forget theoretical speeds. The whole point of my first post was to make it understood that Apple's "theoretical" TB speed predictions are way off mark. Take into account the extra money you have to spend to buy the TB cable and the extra speed doesn't really seem like increased value. As for the RAID array, that's a moot point seeing ass if you did the same thing in a USB 3.0 array you would remove the bottlenecks and still not have to spend extra money on proprietary equipment. So yes a RAID TB set up would beat the hell out of a single USB 3.0 drive, but it would only marginally exceed the same RAID USB 3.0 set up. Not trying to be a dick, it's just that unless you meant 2.0 instead of "3.0", your post makes little sense.
    Reply