HighPointRocketRAID 640L Internal 4-Port PCI-Express 2.0 x4 SATA 3 6Gpbs Controller Card

This is a cost effective card for adding RAID capabilities to almost any system.Pros:Super easy to setupMultiple RAID modes supportedWorks with pretty much any SATA drive availableCons:Drivers can be a pain to find on the websiteSpecial Notes:If you are using a consumer grade computer, this RAID card may not work. I recently tried installing it in a XPS 8940 and windows could not see the card. I tried the different RAID BIOS firmwares by installing the card in another computer (Precision T1700) and flashing it. Eventually I could get the XPS BIOS to see the card but it would still not show up as an available device in Windows.

There is a lot of compatibility issue

These things are solid, Highpoint cards in general.We've been using them for a very long time. (Probably over 15 years)Not a single card has ever failed or lost any data. (We've had other manufactures fail, even Adaptec, we dumped them all and stuck with Highpoint)Easy to install and easy to use.One of its best features is the GUI interface. Its clean and gives you a lot of info and options.You can configure RAID options on the fly, even while the server is in use, like:RAID1 to RAID5, Expanding RAID, Replacing failed drives, and more.For RAID rebuilds you can even set the priority level (low, med, high), so you don't disrupt live server access (Intel Rapid Raid could take some pointers on this one)It has email notification, and a built in buzzer for failed drives.You can set health monitoring to repair bad sectors, or test drives.In our latest experiment...We bought this 640L card to upgrade an older RocketRAID 2220 card. Thought it would be a good test to just swap the cards in the server, and plug in the existing hard drives as is. Amazing they all came up as if the older card was still hosting them.So we can say that at least upgrading to a newer card, will retain all your data. (still backup first, just in case).That in itself is amazing. You can' do this with lot of other manufactures, without rebuilding the data.As for the naysayers, complaining about UEFI.So what if it won't boot in this mode. You can create multiple logical RAID drives.Just make a small MBR 250GB RAID drive for your C, or boot drive.And make a second GPT RAID drive from the rest of the space.Best of both worlds!And this card is plenty fast.At 2x PCIe that's still 2.5GT/s (or 500MB/s)On this 640L card we installed 3 x 6TB WD RED PLUS (thats FRX not FAX) drives in RAID5 (12TB usable).CrystalMarkv3-64 test: (Read 211MB/s, Write 175MB/s) - that is max output for these drives.You want UEFI, and ever faster speeds.How much does this card cost?Sure go spend 10x the price of this card. To get LSI or whatever you think is great.Bottom line, you get way more than what you pay for with this card!

Ich habe mich jetzt stundenlang damit befasst, diesen Controller dazu zu bringen, dass er doch bitte meine Computer von der Festplatte bootet. Aber NEIN .. er ist davon nicht zu überzeugen. Normalerweise müsste diese Karte ein Bios haben, was beim Start angezeigt wird ... diesbezüglich handelt es sich wohl um Wunschdenken meinerseits. Selbst die einfachste Form, einfach 4 Festplatten für Windows 10 zur Verfügung zu stellen, beherrscht er nicht. Die angeblichen von Microsoft WHQL Zertifizierten Treiber, werden von Windows 10, 64 Bit abgelehnt oder besser gesagt, erst gar nicht an dem Speicherort gefunden, an dem sie abgelegt worden sind. In keinen der PCI-X (Slot für die Grafikkarte) wird diese Karte erkanntUm den Frust mit diese Karte ein ende zusetzen, geht sie zurück an den Händler. Ihr Nutzwert ist gleich Null .. ihr Frustwert dafür um so höher. Von diesen Raid Controller kann ich allen nur abraten. Für weniger Geld, findet man bessere Hardware in dieser Richtung bei Amazon.

Purchased to provide a PCI SATA expansion of 2 extra JBOD ports. Perfect - able to boot from these ports (SATA HDD and DVD fitted) - from a Gigabyte GA-Z97-D3H Mobo. This freed up the M2 port so able to develop machine - happy days!Boot process is a bit more contorted initially as it restarts a couple of times when it finds the card, but both the HDD and DVD appear in the GB BIOS boot menu. The card itself is exceptionally well made - the ports accept cables with socket clips which latch into the card. Well packaged with instruction booklet and SATA cables, but no micro DVD with drivers; but they were not required.RAID Bios can be downloaded from the Highpoint web site if needed. This version of the 620 was the RA suffix - not shown on the description - it has no pinned headers or buzzer which are shown on the photos in top corner of PCB directly above SATA connectors . They don't affect my use so not affected. Overall -a great card which does precisely what I wanted it to do so 10/10 and 5*