Review: Promise Pegasus J2i – a $400 8TB internal 3.5-inch HDD enclosure for Mac Pro

24 Comments on Review: Promise Pegasus J2i – a $400 8TB internal 3.5-inch HDD enclosure for Mac Pro

1. Cable management and the actual metal tray is awesome but for $400 can’t have tabs or some kind of secure-but-easy method of adding a second drive?

2. An ENCLOSURE for $400??? Waste of money.

   • With an 8 Tb 3,5 in 7200 rpm drive included, wanted or not.

   • another one never reads.

3. nice review

4. Great for audio work!

5. This is insane. It feellllllss soooooo good.

6. Getting that speed in a “PRO” machine like this, where people buy an expensive product just to save time. It’s just opposite of purchasing this product. Ya people will soon make accessories regarding that mounting slot. Soon!

7. Please someone, i just need the metal and the cable… I don´t need / want that stupid overpriced OEM HDD ! I already have my own.

   • The machine has only been out a few weeks, there will be lots of cheaper options available in the coming months.

   • @Jake M Lets hope so

8. it possible to insert usb drive?

9. What about using a 2,5“ to 3,5“ bracket? Why wouldn‘t that work?

   • Yes, AKA a “sled”. I used this one to install a 2.5″ SSD in my 2010 iMac: https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Desktop-Converter-Mounting-BK-PCBS/dp/B00UN550AC/ It has a nice aluminium construction.

10. Nice to see this is available but i would never screw down these old spinners in my Mac Pro, it just slows down Finder. HDD’s come in handy though for back up etc but i’ll use an external TB3 dock for that and swap them out easily.

    • Yeah, as soon as there is ANY spinning drive attached, finder always waits for them to spin them up… that is the reason there will be no more spinners in my mp setup. Not even for Time Machine 😉

11. When are you going to post the Logitech rugged folio case video.

12. Wait, just to be clear, is there an extra space for an additional drive???

13. I just love these recent videos on the Mac Pro!

14. Is it good for time machine?

15. Wow! I never thought Apple could make a hard drive enclosure looks so damn elegant! I haven’t seen anything like this since their G4 days….

    I guess it’s fine if you want to keep things simple and fairly inexpensive. And it is. An 8TB WD Red drive is $300. I was also thinking that the enclosure/cables alone would cost around $100 – $150. It’s expensive because of the design and quality. Not like the cheap, $15 stamped sheet metal models you usually find.

    I think this would be a good solution if you wanted an inexpensive, faster and temporary solution to keeping data until you archived it onto a NAS. After all, NAS systems have different storage formats on their systems sometimes to speed up retrieval of certain data. Why not have something similar for the Mac Pro. Not everyone will need a $2400+ solution when an $400 will do just fine.

    This machine is just so amazing. Hopefully in 2020….

16. The case should have an included a cage for additional hard drives – especially since the SSD’s on the motherboard are not user upgradable – there are slots for upgrading everything else.

17. I still don’t understand why Apple didn’t build in hot swap for multiple drives. Third party options only? Weird.

18. I would go for a Synology raid 5 nas…this is ok only for raid 0 and 1…I would not use time machine on this setup.