What should I replace my Promise Pegasus2 R4 with?

rroonnbb
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · What should I replace my Promise Pegasus2 R4 with?

I'm about to fill up my 11-year-old Pegasus2 R4 (12TB of disk RAID5'd to 9TB usable) and am trying to figure out what to replace it with. Back in the day it sure seemed like Hardware RAID was the way to go but how do people feel about it nowadays? It's been a great solution for me - super reliable - and so I'm thinking about just getting Pegasus32 R6 or something.

BUT, I really don't know what else is out there so I figured this would be a good place to gather some opinions.

- It'll be hanging off a new M2Pro MacMini, so something that takes advantage of Thunderbolt 4 (or at least 3) would definitely be nice.

- I want something that gives me at LEAST 16TB of usable space but I should probably try for something a bit more so I can wait another 10 years before upgrading again.

- Ideally not too loud (a complaint I've been hearing about the Pegasus32 and is worrying me).

And yes, I'm got 3-2-1 strategy in place - mirroring regularly to a non-raid drive and also everything is up in the Backblaze cloud (and the really important stuff is also in a Dropbox cloud).

In terms of price, like I said I'm considering a $2300 solution with the Pegasus32 array so I'm not necessarily looking for the cheapest - I want something reliable, low- (like, zero-) maintenance and that's not completely obscure/weird/nonstandard.

Thoughts welcome!

Feb 13, 2024 at 02:42 PM

rscheffler
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · What should I replace my Promise Pegasus2 R4 with?

You should cross post this to the processing and printing board where there is a lot more computer related discussion.

Are you able to swap out the HDDs in the existing hardware? If so, and assuming the hardware will work with current large HDD capacities, that would seem to be the most straightforward solution if you want to stay with a RAID solution.

Compared to 11 years ago, HDD capacity is much higher now and you could easily buy a simple RAID 1 box and put two 12, 14, 16, 18, 20TB drives in it and be set for another few years (sounds like you don't generate a lot per year).

Another option would be to add a couple high capacity NVME SSDs as your daily go-to storage for access to your files and back those up to a HDD based RAID, or individual cloned HDDs.

For the amount of storage you're using, RAID may not really offer that much now, compared to back when your current box was new. Back then you likely did it for achieving a certain amount of storage capacity greater than the available single HDD capacity of the time (though it took you ~10 years to fill the array) and a certain degree of peace of mind with RAID 5 redundancy (though a RAID isn't really an 'archive' solution).

NVME SSDs offer a lot more speed now compared to a HDD based RAID, up to 8TB capacity, a much, much smaller footprint in respect to size and power consumption, etc., etc.

Whatever the solution you decide on, IMO the most critical aspect will be maintaining a good backup and archiving solution. Seems like you have that covered.

Feb 13, 2024 at 09:29 PM

rscheffler
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · What should I replace my Promise Pegasus2 R4 with?

I looked up the Pegasus 32 series. If you 'only' want 16TB capacity, going with the R6 is overkill based on your historical storage consumption. R6 or R8 models would make more sense if suddenly you're shooting a lot of video, for example.

TB connectivity is nice, but if HDD based, you won't saturate basic USB 3.2 (10Gb/s).

While SSDs currently max out at 8TB, you could split your existing data across two and have those backed up to larger capacity (16, 18, 20TB) HDDs for cold storage.

IMO it doesn't make sense to spend extra for a ton of storage that will be mostly unused for years. Buy at the current price/capacity/speed sweet spot and upgrade every few years as these parameters are improved. I know a couple 8TB NVMEs right now is not the capacity solution you want, but probably in a couple years there will be 16TB options, or at least before you come close to really needing 16TB. And when you do hit 16TB, 24, 32+TB options will probably be on the market.

Edited on Feb 21, 2024 at 11:42 PM · View previous versions

Feb 13, 2024 at 09:58 PM

rroonnbb
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · What should I replace my Promise Pegasus2 R4 with?

Great advice and yeah that all makes sense. I've gotten used to my 'security blanket' of having a RAID setup and not worrying if a single disk suddenly failed. Before that I was using a Drobo but it kept getting less and less reliable.

Are people mostly just hanging regular (non-raid) solutions off their machines and doing daily clones? Or relying on Time Machine to ensure they've got a (mostly) up-to-date copy?

It all just feels slightly more fiddly than just having a hardware RAID solution but it's definitely going to be more cost effective.

If there's anybody out there that _is_ running an SSD-based RAID solution, I'd love to have you weigh in on what your setup looks like!

Feb 21, 2024 at 05:15 PM

rscheffler
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · What should I replace my Promise Pegasus2 R4 with?

I can only speak for myself: I'm not interested in using a RAID. While it does offer the benefit of a larger total storage pool and redundancy against individual drive failure, it's also more complex and not risk free of losing the entire array. Therefore the data on it still needs to be backed up elsewhere.

If you're concerned about redundancy, a non-RAID solution would be to use an app like Carbon Copy Cloner (it appears you're on a Mac system) set up to automatically run back-up clones on a regular basis. While this would not be the immediate redundancy of something like a RAID 1 or 5, one benefit would be that like Time Machine, if you made accidental file changes on the source disk, CCC on running the back-up, will move the previous file version to its "SafetyNet" for possible later retrieval. With something like a RAID 1, if you make an accidental file change, it immediately propagates to the clone without a recovery option. It would be very easy to set up CCC to run automatically scheduled clones of the source drive to one or multiple back up drives.

There are RAID enclosures for NVME SSDs, such as from OWC, but I have not thoroughly researched them. The one from OWC appears to have some bandwidth limitations and is software RAID based, IIRC, but should still be sufficiently capable for your needs.

Feb 22, 2024 at 12:00 AM


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