HighPoint RocketRAID 3530 PCI-Express x8 SATA II (3.0Gb/s) RAID Controller Card

Pros: Supports 12 SAta Drives

Cons: Supported Drives Drop off
Does not Notify as it should when drives Die
Tech support does not know there own product.

Other Thoughts: I purchased this card in February 2011
Have had issues since originall had it with 8 WD 1.5T Green. Card failed to log any events except those created through the web interface.
Could not created Arrays through the out-of band Interface had to do it in the BIOS.
Swaped to 2 other motherboards same issue except event logging seemed to work still lost both RAID 6 Raids as the controller dropped 5 drives in less then 24 hours.
Purchased a Supported motherboard in March 2012 and removed all WD drives and added 4 1.5TB Seagates from there supported drive list Still had issues and their support still blames the drives so ask them what replacement I could use since their supportded drives are all discontinued NEVER got an answer on that one
I had one of the Seages Die 2 days ago the buzzer sounded but again no event was logged and as a result no email was sent. I have always used Highpoint RAID cards I have a Rocket RADI 133 and 2 2300's never had an issue. I infact had both 2300 in the same system where I also used the motherboards onboard RAID as well and all worked together without issue wish I had kept it that way as the preformance off the 2300's was better then the 3530 which is hardware. The cards can be good BUT tech support is useless they ask you questions you have answered in your request they give miss information IE I have also for a short time had both the 2300 and the 3530 and been able to manage them both with the GUI same with the 2300 (in fact they stated I could with the 2300s).

As a proffesional IT Support person i have stopped recommending Highpoint solely as a result of their support. I also note this is an enterprise controller one should be able to expect same day support and phone but as many have noted your lucky to get a response the same week and there is no phone support.

Pros: Does what it says at a good speed. Running two RAID5 (5x2TB & 4x320GB) and no issues so far.
Cheap
Included cables
Onboard RAID processing
Love the RAID spin up and spin down option

Cons: Documentation

Other Thoughts: Initially had a problem with it and thought it was the card (poor performance and randomly locking up my system). Found out that it was actually due to my mobo not being mounted at the right case height so the card was not properly seated. After fixing this I haven't had an issue.

Looking to buy another if I can confirm Server 2012 drivers.

Pros: Easy Set up and fast transfer rates 350MB average in Raid 5.

Works well with WD Black 1TB and Seagate Green 2TB

Cons: Trouble shooting nightmare. Does not support (SSL) SMTP, which is a requirement today. So problems can build with repeated errors on a disk to an alarming degree, until the problem disk fails, putting the array offline. Replacing the disk starts the rebuild, and this generally works, but this time another disk threw an error and the array was offline.

Other Thoughts: My first attempt to recover the data was to clone the two disks with errors of the array. The controller can not do this. attaching disks to the motherboard controller as AHCI disks and running RAID Restore did not work, cloning disk with Universal Boot did not work.
Cost for professional >$2000. Ran each disk through Seagate test, only one showed 2 bad sectors. Reformatted each disk. Ran foreground initialization and now running w/o problem.

HighPoint says the will update their WebGUI to support (SSL)SMTP,but don't hold my breath. Recommendation: Backup raid to simple volume regularly, check event log regularly, if bad sector shows up, pull the disk and wipe it. Then reinstall. Always use hotspare.

Pros: Easy to setup
Online expansion works well (OCE)
All necessary cables are included (0.6M)
Supports RAID 6
Fast read/write speeds

Cons: As has been mentioned, will not work with another RocketRAID card installed. Confirmed with support. Could not run my RR2310 and RR3530 in the same machine.
Support is abysmal. After about six months my card began to have problems, I moved it to two different machines to make sure it was not my system. Same result on both. It took four days to get an initial response from their web support site. After a week of back and forth (In which they asked me questions I had already answered) they still insist the card is not the problem.

Other Thoughts: Always had good luck with Highpoint products, but after the issues with this card, it will be my last.

Pros: n/a

Cons: n/a

Other Thoughts: HighPoint doesn't bother telling you this on their site or anywhere in their mediocre documentation, but none of their RAID devices are compatible with each other. I found out the hard way when I tried to use a RR622 and RR3530 adapter in the same system. When the RR622 stopped showing up in their web RAID manager, I contacted their tech support. They confirmed twice that their devices aren't compatible in the same system, and they have no plans to correct this any time in the future. Be very wary if you hope at any time to use more than one RAID device in your system.

Pros: - Supports 12 drives
- Can configure single RAID array up to 16TB, even under XP
- Pretty easy setup

Cons: 1. Horrible port location. The ports where the breakout cables attach are at the end of the card. I have a huge server case that holds 12 HD's, but even in this case I was BARELY able to get the cables attached because the ports are butted right up against a bank of HD's. Should have put the ports on the side of the card (duh!). Knocked off an egg for this.
2. HighPoint RAID Management software supports only 1 HPt controller at a time. What a complete screwup this is. Their devices aren't even compatible with each other! I also have a HPt RR622 controller for an external RAID enclosure, and now I can only manage it thru the BIOS. Guess I'm lucky it didn't wipe out 8TB of data on that array. I'm knocking off 2 eggs for this. This problem means that I can never install any other HPt controllers in this system, which limits my options. I actually have to replace a perfectly good controller, just because of this incompatibility.

Other Thoughts: To HighPoint: Hire some software engineers who actually know what they are doing. In case you didn't know, the ones you have don't have a clue. Every other company that makes RAID controllers knows how to make them work with their own products, except you. Everybody else figured out conflict resolution 15 years ago; this is pretty rudimentary stuff here. And yes, I confirmed with your tech support that there is no solution to this problem. You want to play with the big boys, you gotta do a lot better than this.

Pros: *Breakout Cables
*3TB Drive Support
*Raid 6
*Webgui Is easy
*Supports WHS, FreeNas (I used this in freenas for a bit to copy my files from my ZFS arrays to my new array for WHS)

Cons: *A Bit long.
*Slightly Warped, not causing any problems just aethisiasticly unappealing.

Other Thoughts: Can you say 36TB Array with Raid 6 and 12 3TB Deckstars. Works wonderfully. First Raid card I've ever bought or used. But price is cheaper and I could see where a few would be bad as other reviewers have stated. But When you get the good one. Woooo DOG this thing kills it.

Pros: Price, comes with breakout cables, supports up to 12 HDDs

Cons: This card will prevent your computer from being able to reboot. If you try to do a restart from windows, the card will not properly load its BIOS and will freeze during bootup. You have to shut down your computer for 30 seconds or so, every single time. This alone made me have little confidence in the quality of this product (and let's not joke around, a RAID card is an extremely important piece of hardware in your system...)

Runs extremely hot as well and that was only after maybe 10 minutes of use with an open case.

It can make your hard drives unusable by any other controller if you aren't paying attention and enable a certain feature.

Other Thoughts: I don't understand why everyone else is giving this 5 stars. It would be better worth your time to look into a product from a more reputable company.

Pros: Huge expansion capacity (12 drives)
Onboard XOR calcs run fast and without burdening the CPU.
Comes with break out cables which helps with expense.
Excellent value for money.

Supports RAID 6 - a critical feature if you want to build an array or larger proportions (6TB +)

Cons: There appears to be very little in the way of documentation for this product. For example the web management functionality is password protected and apparently undocumented as far as I can tell.... Thanks to another New Egg reviewer for posting it here in the reviews BTW.

Also; Original card died shortly after first post; RMA was quick and back on the rails. Now its rock steady.

Other Thoughts: Currently operating a 8TB array in RAID 6. Performance is pretty good (Seagate 2TB 5900 RPM Green) and have yet to experience any issues.

Within a year I'll be bringing the drive total to 12, then we'll really see what the controller can do.

My advice to anyone purchasing is to test the features before committing your data (online raid migration, expansion etc); it would be unnerving to try and decipher the options while risking data destruction.

Pros: Fast!
Easy to configure.
Comes with 3 cables for a total of 12 drives!
ORLM/OCE
Long cables

Cons: Documentation is a bit thin.

Other Thoughts: Large arrays take forever to initialize/rebuild/expand. Adding 8TB to an existing 8TB RAID5 took 6.5 days! It can run in the background so you can still use the array, but I was a bit worried about potential issues while it was building with data on it. It all worked out fine and I'm very happy with it.