High Point Highpoint RocketRAID 2720A 8-6GB/s SAS Port Raid HBA

I'm using RAID-5 on a custom Windows 10 pc for a home media server used both as a LAN server for home streaming and as a Plex server so friends can stream my collection remotely. I originally started out using Windows 10 software RAID for a couple drives, but that was terrible and I quickly outgrew it, upgrading to a HighPoint RocketRaid 640L which worked great but maxed out at 4 HDDs. Since I run 4tb drives, this meant it topped out at 12tb in RAID-5 which I once again outgrew. I figured out that it was going to be a lot more expensive and a much bigger pain to replace all the drives with bigger ones than to just get a different RAID controller that could hold more drives, plus staying with 4tb drives is cheaper each time I need a little more storage space.So that's where this RocketRaid 2840C comes in. It can hold up to 16 drives via two of their SAS to SAS or SATA breakout cables (don't get the cheap 3rd party ones, suck it up and overpay for the HighPoint ones). For my purposes with the 4tb drives, that mean's I'll have up to 60tb in RAID-5 which should last a good long while even with a 4k UHD bluray collecting habit lol! This card and the HighPoint online RAID management also supports running multiple controllers withing the same RocketRaid family, so I have no concerns about running out of storage space (at that point, the bigger problem will be the physical space the HDDs would take up lol). As an additional note, hardware-wise the controller card doesn't draw huge amounts of power from the PSU, it's low-profile, and has heat sinks.I really can't say enough good for the HighPoint online RAID management, this is an absolutely brilliant solution for users like me. The interface may be clunky, but there are clear walkthroughs available for how to use it and the online management makes maintenance, adding storage space, and changing controllers just sooo easy--and you do not need to be a computer wizard to use it. If you posses some basic to intermediate knowledge of computers and the ability to know what to google to do your research in setting up the right RAID array for your needs, you can use this brand's controllers no problem. When I upgraded from the 640L to the 2840C, I was staggered at how smoothly it went. It literally involved pulling the old card out of my pc, installing the new card, running the new SAS to SATA breakout cables to my drives, booting back up, installing the driver for the 2840C, and my entire RAID array was just...back. Like nothing ever changed. No new configurations, no problems, no bs. At the same time I also added a new drive to expand my total array storage capacity by another 4tb; this is very easy too, you install your new drive to your case, run the cable, initialize it in Windows and then go through the couple of steps to run Online Capacity Expansion in the online HighPoint management. This will rebuild the array with the space of the new drive added, which takes a while (doing 16tb with 5 drives took about 34 hours for me, but the array was accessible during that time--the wait is just for the additional capacity). I haven't had a need to change RAID levels, but I understand that it's similarly doable with the online management.This is just suuuuper smooth and simple and maximized the uptime of your array. I'm giving the old chef's kiss to this entire setup and I'm totally sold on the RocketRaid products with online management concept, it's absolutely brilliant and a great choice for the many of us who are increasingly getting fed up with fickle, greedy streaming services and/or are digitizing our hard copy collections for centralized home or remote streaming and finding the all-in-one box NAS setups too limiting. If you possess the ability to set up something like that, you can certainly use these controllers with a basic, familiar pc and have something way more flexible and upgradable. Highly recommended!

I have used Highpoint cards for many years. I used to use the 2322, and now I use the 2722. I have probably a dozen of the 2722 model now in my own Mac Pro systems and client Mac Pro systems.These cards have always been great performers. A couple of years ago one of these RAID systems almost succumbed to the Seagate firmware fiasco. But to my amazement the RAID array held together and I was able to migrate the data to a new set of drives.I have never had reason to contact their tech support - until about a month ago. I took the bleeding edge approach with a new server - going with a Mac mini and a Thunderbolt PCI expansion chassis. And yes I bled. :-)The card would not be recognized by the OS.The experience with Highpoint's tech support was prompt and ultimately successful. Highpoint was able to update the driver, and now a new Mac mini is happily hosting a 12-TB RAID 5/0 array.The reviews prior to mine just don't make sense to me, unless perhaps these reviewers were using consumer-grade desktop drives in RAID systems. The use of desktop drives in a RAID system would completely explain their woes. I use nothing but RAID drives in RAID systems. There are important differences between desktop drives and enterprise drives, and pretending these differences don't exist will result in much angst. Desktop drives should not be used in RAID systems, and enterprise drives should not be used as stand-alone drives in a desktop.I do have one nit to pick with Highpoint. They should update their documentation for the Mac explaining that it is unnecessary with OS X 10.8.x to install the driver that is included on the CD or available for download. All that is necessary is that the Web GUI be installed by doing a Custom Install of the driver installer. If the driver is installed along with the Web GIU, it will conflict with the driver included with the OS. This point should be made clear as day in the documentation and on the download page for the driver. In fact there should be two installers - one for the driver and another for the Web GUI - not both rolled into one.Nit pick aside, I do highly recommend Highpoint products on the Mac. Next I will try one of their RocketStor docks.*UPDATE*I am having to reduce my rating from 5 stars to 2 stars.If you are using this in a PCI based Mac Pro then my 5-star raing still applies. However if you are using this in a Thunderbolt system then avoid this product. I discovered a serious performance bug in this card in Thunderbolt systems:I placed a RAID & this card on a Mac Pro with internal PCI and measured the performance, which was excellent. I then took the same RAID & card and placed it in a Mac mini with a Sonnet Thunderbolt enclosure. The write performance was excellent and matched that of the Mac Pro. However the read performance was 1/5 - an 80% degradation. I contacted their tech support and they were able to confirm this behavior, and they said it could not be corrected. Tech support said the 472x line would have better performance.I have about 5 of these cards in Thunderbolt environments. I have repeatedly contacted their sales department with the request of an upgrade to the 472x card. All attempts have been ignored.Meanwhile on their web site this card is still listed as compatible with Thunderbolt. The performance is so poor in my opinion this card cannot be qualified as compatible with Thunderbolt.Due to this brush-off by sales I am going to standardize on a different manufacturer's card. I'm done with HighPoint.*UPDATE 2* March 2015And a happy ending to this Thunderbolt situation.Somewhere along the line Highpoint fixed the performance issue with Thunderbolt environments. I was using one of the Mac minis with the RAID to do some testing. I noticed with Yosemite that the performance was as expected. Yosemite comes with driver version 4.3.3. So as a test I wiped the OS and installed a Mavericks (which comes with driver 4.0.0). Sure enough the performance was back to terrible.Next I downloaded & installed driver 4.4.4 from Highpoint. Now under Mavericks the performance was again terrific.I will revise my rating back to 5 stars. Although I am not in the least bit pleased by the brush off by their tech support with saying that the problem could not be fixed.Had the numbskulls not brushed me off like that that and had instead fixed the problem I wouldn't have gone and recommended cards from another vendor.

I have 5-4TB drives connected in RAID5 using SAS to SATA Cables. Has been running for several months with no issue at all. Performance is great for a mass storage device, no issues playing 4K movies from it. Setup was painless.

Received and tested, work perfectly.

Sto usando da oltre 6 mesi diversi modelli della HighPoint in aggiunta a delle StarTech.Questa scheda configurata in raid0 su 8 dischi standard da almeno 7200 giri porta ad una velocità strabiliante, quasi 2 giga di bitrate. Con gli SSD si va oltre e persino su un Magma TB1 ottiene quei risultati con un MacBook.Non è necessario usare il suo software di amministrazione raggiungibile in localhost:7402 per ottenere la velocità: sul Mac basta che i dischi vengano letti dal sistema e si possono creare set RAID0 con l'assistente Raid di Apple Sierra. La differenza è che i dischi gestiti in quel modo sono leggibili anche da una StarTech miniSAS. Certo, quella ha un solo canale miniSAS da 4 dischi e non supporta il Raid5 o altre configurazioni.I dati di configurazione sono scritti sui dischi, non ha memoria tampone, quindi se sposti i dischi su un'altra scheda nella maggior parte dei casi vengono riconosciuti e automaticamente ri-configurati senza perdita di dati. Anche il RAID5 si è dimostrato eccellente consentendomi di cambiare un disco rotto con circa 24 ore di ricostruzione del set mancante, mentre lo usavo.

My Atto R380 died in the middle of a gig and I needed to replace it fast. I could not get my hands on an ATTO R680 card in time so I ordered the rocket raid card. I had reservations based on the fact that it reportedly does not have an onboard processor to do the raid management - it reportedly offloads this to the CPU. I am glad I went with this card. Is is markedly faster than the ATTO running an 8 7200rpm drives in a Raid 6 configuration. I am getting 600mb/s+ reads and 500mb/s writes. This suits me just fine. It is faster, cheaper, runs cooler and is easier to manage than the ATTO. I do not see any noticeable processing penalty during high disk use. I would recommend this to anyone doing video production using avid/prem/resolve.

No issues that other reviewers have. Perfect card.Please note that this card requires a decent host (PC). The CPU in the host will need to do alot of the owrk for RAID calculations.If you have a poor PC performance then a more expensive card with a CPU built in is required.