Overview

Since the initial release of the first computers with Intel’s Thunderbolt technology, Promise has been on the forefront of Thunderbolt-enabled storage devices. Starting with the Pegasus R4 and R6, Promise was the first company to provide an external RAID solution with a Thunderbolt interface.
 
 
Last year, we took a look the the Pegasus R4 in our initial Windows Thunderbolt testing, and were extremely satisfied with the performance we saw. Since then, a Pegasus Thunderbolt RAID device filled with SSDs has been crucial to our Frame Rating graphics testing methodology, providing the extremely high bandwidth we need to capture uncompressed video.
 
Today we are taking a look a different class of storage device from Promise, the Pegasus J2. The J2 is an external Thunderbolt-based SSD, which Promise says is capable of speeds up to  550 MB/s write and 750 MB/s read. Being one of the only standalone Thunderbolt drives we have seen, we were eager to take a look and evaluate these claims.
 
 
The best way to describe the size of the Pegasus J2 would be approximately the same as standard deck of playing cards. While it may not be as small as some of the external USB3 SSDs we have seen, the J2 remains a reasonable size for throwing in a backpack or briefcase on the go.
 
Internals of the J2 consist of two mSATA SSDs each ssitting behind a ASmedia 1061 PCI-Express SATA 6G controller, which is then connected to Intel’s Port Ridge Thunderbolt controller. Due to the lack of RAID functionality in the ASMedia 1061, the SSDs appear as two separate logical drives, rely on software RAID inside of whatever OS you are using.
 
 
The SSDs themselves are based on the Phison PS3108 controller. While Phison doesn’t get much coverage from their SSD controllers, their controllers have been found in some value SSDs from the likes of Kingston, Patriot, and other companies for a few years at this point. 
 
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