HighPoint RocketRAID 2300 & 1740 SATA II Preview
Reviewed by: Makaveli
Reviewed on: January 5, 2008
: HighPoint
: HighPoint
Price: TBA
Introduction:
Most onboard RAID controllers these days are rather flaky. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a RAID controller that is reliable, has many options and is inexpensive? We may have just found the answer with the HighPoint RocketRAID 1740 and 2300 SATA II cards. Could these inexpensive RAID controllers be the solid and feature-packed cards you’ve been looking for? Join me as we take a sneak-peak to upcoming reviews of the HighPoint RocketRAID 1740 and 2300 SATA II cards.
Closer Look:
Both the HighPoint RocketRAID 1740 and 2300 came packaged in similar ways. We don't want to spoil too much of the upcoming review, but here are some pictures of the cards. The top row of pictures are of the 1740 and the bottom row are of the 2300.
The 2300 is a PCIe 1x card while the 1740 is for use in a PCI slot. Will there be any difference in performance benefit by using one over the other? Stay Tuned.
Installation:
The HighPoint RocketRAID 1740 is a PCI card while the 2300 model is for PCI-Express slots. To install either card, you’ll need to first power off your machine and remove any cards in the slot that you want to install either the RocketRAID 1740 or 2300. Once your card has been installed, you can hook up to as many as four SATA II hard drives.
Configuration:
Once the drives are installed, power up your machine and you’ll be presented with the RocketRAID BIOS Utility. Press CTRL-H to access the RocketRAID BIOS, so that you can create and configure your RAID array. There is an abundant selection of options but you’ll have to come back for the full review to get the complete details.
Specifications:
2300:
- PCI Express x1 (x4, x8 and x16 slot compatible)
- SATA II and SATA I hard drive support
- Up to 300MB/s for each SATA II drive port
- Support RAID level 0, 1, 5, 10 and JBOD
- Dynamic Sector Repair and Remapping
- Online Capacity Expansion and Online RAID Level Migration (OCE/ORLM)
- Native Command Queuing (NCQ)
- SAF-TE enclosure management
- Hard drive activity and Failed LED support
- Staggered drive spin-up support
- Hot swap and hot spare
- Write-through and write-back cache support
- Quick and Background initialization for quick RAID configuration
- Online array roaming
- BIOS booting support (INT13)
- 64bit LBA for over 2TB support
- Automatic RAID rebuild of failed drive
- S.M.A.R.T drive monitoring for status and reliability
- Browser-based RAID management software
- Command Line Interface (CLI)
- SMTP for email notification
- Operating system support for Windows, Windows x64 Editions, Linux (open source) and FreeBSD (open source)
1740:
- PCI 32bit@33/66 MHz 4 SATA II 3Gb/s ports
- Up to 4 SATA II or SATA I Hard Drives
- Support RAID 0, 1, 5, 10, and JBOD
- Backward compatible to RocketRAID 1640 RAID arrays
- Dynamic Sector Repair and Remapping Native Command Queuing (NCQ)
- Online Capacity Expansion (OCE) and Online RAID Level Migration (ORLM)
- Staggered drive spin up
- Hard Disk (Activity / Failed) LED chassis function
- SAF-TE Enclosure Management Functions
- BIOS Booting (INT13) to RAID array
- Quick and Background initialization for instant RAID access
- Write through and write back cache for RAID arrays
- Hot swap and hot spare Online array roaming
- Automatic detect drive to rebuild degraded RAID
- S.M.A.R.T array monitoring for hard drive status and reliability
- 64bit LBA for RAID arrays greater than 2TB
- Low profile form factor for 1U chassis
- Web browser-base software (Web GUI)
- Command Line Interface (CLI)
- SMTP email notification for events and error reporting
- Remote array management through (Web GUI, RAID GUI and CLI)
- Support Windows (XP, 2000, Server 2003), Linux and FreeBSD
- RoHS Compliant
Testing:
To test both the RocketRAID 1740 and 2300, we’ll be testing RAID 0, 0+1, 5, in Windows Vista 64bit, Vista 32bit and Windows XP 64bit operating systems. We’ll be comparing the nForce onboard RAID controller to both the RocketRAID 1740 and 2300. You’ll have to read back to see our test setups, but here is a sneak-peak at some of the results for RAID 0 in Windows XP 64.
After seeing these results, I'll bet that you can't wait for the full reviews!
Conclusion:
Hopefully, this preview has whet your appetite adequately, because I know that I am looking forward to seeing the full review on each of these cards. HighPoint has been gracious enough to supply two RocketRAID 2300’s for our OCC Christmas Giveaway. I'm sure the winners are going to thoroughly enjoy their RocketRAID cards! Be sure to check back soon for full reviews on both the HighPoint Rocket RAID 1740 and 2300 to see just how well they perform against on-board RAID controllers, as well as against each other.