HighPoint RocketRAID 1742 PCI 32bit@33/66Mhz Serial ATA I or II Controller Card

Pros: CONFIRMED - works with port multipliers. Alerts you when there is an error and logs it. And when configured correctly, will fix disk issues

Cons: Must update the firmware right away, otherwise you will have some issues. GUI interface is very basic and barebones.

Other Thoughts: Great Card for the money. Ditch the card you get with your port multiplier and get this.

Pros: None for me

Cons: Would not boot with my HP ML330 G3 and two 640GB western digital drives. I contacted tech support and was told that the hard drives i was using were not tested...tried different drives and Server 2003 would not recognize them on installation.

Other Thoughts: I flashed the newest firmware and got the newest drivers from their site. Tech support was slow and unhelpful, took over a day to get a response and 1/2 of those responses were them clarifying what i had already stated quite clearly.

Pros: * It is PCI which allows the card to be installed in older systems which lack PCI-E and won't fit PCI-X due to components sitting behind PCI header

* It makes a beautiful, geeky paperweight

* The gold-plated edge connectors must be worth something

Cons: * Linux drivers are WAY outdated and will not work with current Linux distros

* It is FakeRAID not hardware RAID

* The source code posted to Highpoint's site will fail to compile in many distros. To get it to compile you need to remove some exception handling, which is never a good thing.

Other Thoughts: Do yourself a favor and spend the cash to upgrade your motherboard AND RAID card, and choose 3ware or LSI (available on Newegg) because your time savings will by far outweigh the perceived "waste" of tossing your old motherboard and processor. Seriously - this "RAID" controller is not worth your time.

Pros: Card can make use of JBOD and Pass-Thru (unlike what previous user said) I have 2 port multiplyers on it. Building 1 8tb Raid 5 and 1 1.5tb Raid 5 on the same card! 5 1TB drives 4 1.5TB drives. (Extra Space is used for the 1.5tb Raid 5)

Cons: It's a little slow to build, but really i'm trying to 2 builds at one time with over 10TB on 2 port Multiplers...

Other Thoughts: Great budget card for people looking to do some mid-level raiding. Easy to use, Nice web interface, (although i haven't been able to figure out why i can't connect to the card from any other computer) and it's PCI. Fully Featured. A Great Buy

Pros: It certainly does allow you to build a Hardware RAID. Just be SURE to update the firmware and RAID software before you do anything else. If you're building a large array you might want to look at a more expensive card. That being said, for the money, this is a really good card.

Cons: Older software. Not the fastest HW RAID.

Pros: Has worked fine under Debian GNU/Linux Lenny and Etch with kernel module compiled from the vendor and installed in the initial ramdisk(initrd) image. It has a loud beeper to inform you of a failure - excellent as monitoring this raid by other means seems difficult

Cons: Manual is poor, but those with enough tech knowledge can get by. CLI is clunky, but functional.

Other Thoughts: Have not had a disk failure yet on my RAID1 array so I can't say how it really performs in that respect.

Pros: I ordered the card which arrived quickly and am very happy with it. I converted my desktop from a single drive machine to a RAID 1 supported desktop as foll follows:
1. Order a second drive for your PC which I have a DELLE521 PC w/Western Digital 1TB drive.
2. Install the card on the system so you have the card and driver loaded.
3. Purchase a copy of Acronis 10 Backup and Recovery to create an image of your machine.
4. Create a Windows PE bootable ISO CD with Acronis which allows you to include the RocketRAID 1742 drivers into the ISO and then burn the ISO CD and tells you where to download the Windows PE 2.x files for this.
5. Create the RAID-1 configuration by going into the CTRL-H when you bootup on the 1742 RAID card.
6. Boot up with the ISO CD you just created and restore you desktop image to the newly created RAID-1 drives and reboot when done.
7. It worked flawless these steps and now have a RAID-1 machine.

Cons: None.

Pros: Easy install, works great for RAID5 or whatever your needs are. Has logging features and alerting. I got mine to work with an eSATA tower with integrated backpane multiplier by initializing the drives first under devices. Nice and quick even while it was background-initializing the array.

Cons: None that I can think of.

Pros: Good card, well-supported software, good cables in the package. Seems to be the best choice for a small RAID array if you have only standard PCI slots to work with on linux.

Cons: Conflicting spec documentation lead me to believe I could use this card with a port multiplier to handle 4 drives using one eSATA connector. In fact it does not support port multipliers and will only see the first drive.

Other Thoughts: I'm somewhat disappointed that the card doesn't meet the need I had intended, but I'm sure I can put it to use somewhere else in our network.

Pros: addendum to previous review--newegg shipping was quick, returns easy

Cons: does not work with sata optical drives; I returned and got rosewill RC-209-EX from newegg which supports HDD and optical drives