When Apple released new MacBook Pros in early 2011, they featured Thunderbolt, a new connectivity technology capable of high-speed data throughput. Thunderbolt peripherals, however, took a little while to come to market. Promise was among the first with its Pegasus R6 RAID array, and it was well worth the wait.
The R6 is fast. Our lab tests showed that the R6 using Thunderbolt was nearly seven times faster than FireWire 800 in the AJA System Read test, which simulate data transfers done by professional video equipment. The AJA System Write test clocked the R6’s Thunderbolt results as 11 times faster than FireWire 800.
The R6 features six 7200 rpm 2TB hard drives, which are preconfigured as a RAID 5, but you can use the included utility to change the RAID to level 0, 1, or 10. The drives are hot swappable, and the R6 has two Thunderbolt ports, so it’s easy to daisy chain multiple Thunderbolt devices. However, you’ll need to buy a $50 Thunderbold cable separately.
If you have a Thunderbolt Mac and edit video, audio, or images, or you perform some other disk-intensive task, you’ll quickly appreciate the Pegasus R6 ($1999).—ROMAN LOYOLA