I'm not new to RAID (or highpoint) controllers, so I was sure to pick this up sooner or later. Not disappointed!
The RAID 5 and 6 performance was surprising considering it lacks a BBU/memory option like some of HighPoint's other RAID controllers (I have used their 4300 series for several years).
RAID 6 appears to be a new feature for this series, and it doesn't support it out of the box (at least not what I was shipped). If you are interested (of course, right!) be sure to the download the updates from the product page.
Their driver support is also better than expected (all major Windows releases, and it appears to support many Linux dist.).
I haven't contacted their support dept. for this model, but have had no major problems with them in the past. Broken record here (read the other reviews) but I advise using "RAID" drives like Seagate constellations. I had problems with WD Black drives and highpoint cards in the past, and initially blamed Highpoint. I later experienced dropped drives with other brands, so it was not the fault of the card.
Great Value, (What's this?) Great value here - can't think of anything else in this price range that offers this type of RAID support (0, 1, 5, 6, 10), port count (8) and PCI-E 2.0. I purchased this to upgrade a general-use server (Win2008) for a set of WD RE4 already on hand.
Great SAS 6Gb/s solution for workstation and general server, (What's this?) 8-port 6Gb/s PCI-E x16 RAID for under $200 is a steal! Sounds too good to be true really, but there are a lot of positive reviews out there so it seemed a sensible purchase. Very happy thus far.
It's currently configured as a 4-disk RAID 5 with 1 spare, and will serve as a general storage server for several workstations. The 3 remaining channels will be used for expansion, as needed. The Web interface provides RAID expansion options (your data is left intact). Highpoint calls it OCE/ORLM, and it's something I didn't expect for a card in this price range - excellent value.
I contacted their support department for information about BIOS and driver updates, and found the system to be better than expected. Although the lack of phone support is a downer, it's not something you would expect to get for this price range, so no real complaint here. Their web portal was responsive and not difficult to use (despite some of the complaints) and they directed me to the new driver update for RAID 6 support in less than a business day.
So far so good - been running for a few days now with no trouble to report - will post an update in a week or so., but it looks like it was well bought.
The most unreliable device I've seen in a long time., (What's this?) I formerly owned a RocketRaid 1740 card and so I figured I would upgrade to a card that supported more ports. So I got this card , the RocketRaid 2720SGL. I figured that HighPoint's quality would be continued in this product, IT WASNT. I install this card, it sees my drives during bootup as legacy devices, which is fine. But upon windows 7 loading the audible alarm sounds constantly. And considering its about a 70 decibels buzzer, it was not a welcomed surprised at 6am in the morning. No matter which driver (Raid or Non Raid as provied by Highpoint's website) the audible alarm sounds on Windows 7 booting. Thats when it decides to "see" the drives. When I let the computer boot the card with no drives attached and then plug the drives in, the card sees the same drives that it used to see during boot before windows as failed drives and requests that I "Format them before use". Keep in mind that the older 1740 card and my OS sees the same drives just fine. This card is a real piece of crap and certainly not worth the money they charge for it. I dont know if its the technology in general or if this entire line of HighPoint cards is messed up. This card is certainly being returned defective because I have no desire to spend another 4 hours playing with a device when I kinda have better things to do.
Good pricing good performance, Very fast, and a good RAID solution for workstations and even desktops - SAS 6Gb/s is ideal as it supports all current SAS/SATA drives and SSD's. Price is crazy - I imagine some will be scared by it, but the card seems to be very dependable.
I consistently see 600+ with 5 WD RE4's in RAID0 (8 ought to scale up predictably - I suspect 900+ is reasonable). RAID 5 is equally impressive.
The other review's (bumblebee) advice is good - don't waste time with standard drives if you are serious about your storage.
RAID Config (And all data) Lost on Reboot, (What's this?) Enjoy my tragic story, have a laugh at least...
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So, I get this wonderfully cheap card that does Raid5 for a screaming deal of about $140. I install it, plug in my SAS to SATA cables and hook it up to 6 shiny new 3TB drives.
I figure, just to be on the safe side, let's build a RAID5 array so I have some redundancy for about 10TB of data, and since it doesn't come with a cache just to really be on the safe side, let's just make it 'write-through'. I initialize the array and wait about 2 days for this whopping ~13TB RAID5 array to build. I format it and off I go.
It serves as a catch all for all my external drives I've accumulated over about 10 years. I figure, RAID5, it's safe, so I've been cutting/pasting to make it also easier to stop at a whim and resume from where it left off.
I get about 9TB into the data move and decide, you know, it's been a while since I rebooted (about 3 days of just non-stop data transfer)... things have started to slow down a bit... maybe a reboot will speed them back up to the initial speeds I was seeing of around ~80mb/s.
So I reboot, and the RAID BIOS splash screen comes up and begins scanning for the drives... It finds 2. I quickly hit Ctrl+H to go into the BIOS, it actually sees all 6, but only 2 are "Legacy". The other four are listed as "New". Wonderful I think to myself, this must be some trick in the BIOS and that's because I used the Web GUI in Windows to build it. The Windows driver will know what to do -- I'm sure -- I just need to let it start up and let it figure things out... So I quit out of the BIOS and let it resume it's load into Windows...
So, Windows comes up and presents me with a nice shiny "Drive F:" must be formatted dialog box when I log in. At this point I just wonder, "something just isn't right. Maybe I need to let the system do a hard reboot or something." So full shutdown ensues and I wait a bit...praying. So I bring it back online and surprise -- the same behavior is observed. Ok, now panic starts to begin as I know that all the data I'd put on these drives has been "cut" off of the old externals.
Fortunately for me, I have a normal HDD that I still use as my boot drive, so I go into windows and start scanning the net.
Could not get it to work, (What's this?) Have been struggling for 2 days now to get it to work.
1. Would not provide BIOS menu for configuration
2.
6Gb/s (600MB/s) data transfer rate.PCI-Express 2.0 x8.2 Internal Mini-SAS ports.RAID level 0, 1, 5, 10, 50 and JBOD.Major OS support includes Windows, Linux, Free BSD and Mac OS X 10.7x Lion (only for RocketRAID 2722 and 2744). The RocketRAID 2720SGL package significantly reduces up-front costs, yet retains all features of the standard retail product. SGL HBA�s allow Solution Providers to configure storage platforms to meet a client's exact specifications, while avoiding unwanted expenses and incompatible cabling hardware.
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