HighPoint RocketRAID 4310 PCI-Express x8 Four-Port SATA and SAS HARDWARE RAID Controller Card

Pros: Setup was easy with the boot manager. I have been running a raid 10 array of 4 x 146GB Fujitsu SAS drives ( 15K ). I haven't had a single drive failure, or problem with the array ever. This is after having moved the server between 3 data centers.

Cons: Had problems getting into the web admin, password would not work. Contacted HighPoint and was told to update the bios, which is not possible to do remotely. Wish there was software based tools to monitor the array, similar to the way intel does their onboard controllers. This is the only reason for the deduction of 1 egg.

Other Thoughts: ATTO Benchmark reported 150MB/s read and 130 MB/s write. This test was performed while the server was under load ( IIS 7.5 for about 100 websites, MySQL, SmarterMail, SmarterStats ) OS is Server 2008 R2 Wed Edition. I also have the battery backup module, and it still works after 3+ years. This server has been running 24/7 for the past 3 years with no issues. SuperMicro dual Xeon 90nm single core hyperthreaded, 16GB RAM. No powerful by today's standards.

I am now building a new server, and I am seriously going to consider getting another HighPoint card for my next build which will consist of 6 x 256GB Samsung 840 Pros. Not sure if I will be going raid 10 or 6.

Pros: Low price

Cons: Fails, I'm on my 2nd one of these cards. The other one ran fine, mostly, for about 2 years. Then the volume with the RAID on this card started hanging once a month, then once a week, then more often and I ordered a replacement.

I've had the replacement about 60 days and I've started to see the same issues again.

Don't buy this card

Pros: I purchased this product from newegg in June of 2010. It has worked perfectly since the day I installed it. I purchased it to replace an onboard Intel motherboard controller that kept dropping disks from an array. I run a RAID 10 array with four WD RE3 1TB drives. I get excellent read performance (up to 240 MB/s sequential read) and I have never had a single dropped disk or other error recovery problem. The ROM loader for this array is large and takes time to start, but it is worth it! The management software is web based and connects to a locally installed service. It provides SMART info for each individual disk. I would recommend this controller to anyone looking for a moderately priced 4-disk controller. It is worth the money!

Cons: The included SAS to SATA cable is for only 1 disk. You must purchase the 4 disk cable separately.

Other Thoughts: I had a small problem with the ROM image failing to load in my system when an additional RAID controller card was installed. I resolved it by disabling other devices on the motherboard. I won't subtract an egg because my understanding is that there is VERY limited ROM space in BIOS based systems... this is not a fault of the product.

Pros: Decent controller, relatively fast and software is ok

Cons: Now that I've had it for a little over a year I can say - stay away. Cooling fan died about 5months in and recently I started having problems with the connector. Can't find where exactly it is - the board itself or just the connector is bad, but the board keeps losing one of the drives. Tried replacing a drive and the cable - same problem, so it's the board for sure. RR customer service? Non existent.

Pros: Cheaper then most raid cards (but I guess you get what you pay for). Setup was pretty simple and it looked like it would have been easy to use if it had worked. However, newegg was phenomenal and the return could not have been easier or less painful.

Cons: None of the drives in my backplane showed up when attached to the device making it useless. Before ordering I checked my motherboard, hard drive, and bios version compatibility at (http://www.highpoint-tech.com/PDF/IOP%20Compatibility_List.pdf). Even though they were compatible, and even after updating my bios and the firmware on the card it did not work. I would not recommend.

Other Thoughts: make sure you check compatibility (but even then it may not work)

Pros: Large amount of OS'es supported, both Windows and Linux....and Vmware. Perhaps it's not vmware certified, but there is a way to get it to work in esxi. It took me about 3 hours to figure it out though. Very frustrating.

Cons: Need to manually edit the vmware.xml file to get it to work. High degree of knowledge needed, and this really shouldn't be that difficult. The Highpoint guys need to get their coding straight. See below for my instructions.

Other Thoughts: Download their v1.6 tar file, open it, mount the iso inside of that (I used Ubuntu), navigate inside that iso to find the offline-bundle folder, and in that is a zip file with a really long file name (hpt-hptiop...etc). Open that zip file, find the metadata.zip file, open THAT one up, and open the vmware.xml file. Search for and replace all occurrences where it says version="4.0" or version="4.0.0" with version="4.*". There are about 5 occurences. These version numbers indicate the version of esxi you are using. If you are using 4.1, then putting in the wildcard asterisk makes it all okay. Save the xml file, and keep the entire zip structure otherwise intact. Copy the file into a datastore or your vmware file system, and then run the following command

esxupdate --bundle=<put the really long hpt filename here.zip> update

and I'll be da*mned if it doesn't work.

Pros: Fast card for data-stores.
Nice Price.
Real "Hardware" RAID

Cons: This card is NOT ESXi Certified as advertised!!

Take a look at the installation instructions (BTW the directions are 90% useless), or try to find this card in the VMWare HCL.

It can work with VMware but you cannot boot from the array.

Other Thoughts: I bought 2 of these to use on my test server and my live server. I got the first one to work on my test server. I was less successful with the live server and now the first one stopped working.
I was hoping to buy a card and have it recognized as a device by VMWare and be done, not have to run through installing drivers from antiquated (VMWare 3.5) directions.

Pros: Outstanding RAID card! Setup could not be easier. Took about 4 hours to format 4 WD 1TB Enterprise drives into a RAID 5. Setup card in Windows 7 without incident. No driver problems at all. The boot delay is not all that long as some have commented

Cons: Manual is OK, but not a lot of great detail so a knowledge of RAID is helpful. If setting up an array beyond 2TB you need to be aware of the 2TB limitation. In Win 7 and Vista you can always use the GPT format if using them for storage and not to boot.

Other Thoughts: If you are looking for an economical RAID card I would highly recommend this card and encouraging you to not pay too much attention to the negative reviews on here. Given the ease and simplicity of setting this card up, my guess is that most of the people leaving negative reviews do not really have a "High Understanding" of RAID as they often indicate in their tech knowledge rating. People are a lot more prone to post a negative review than positive, but you will notice all the positive reviews for this card indicate, as I have, that setup is very simple. I can't comment on drive compatibility though, as I used the WD Enterprise Drives listed on their compatibility list. I have had no trouble with these drives though. I'm running 4 1TB drives in RAID 5 for video capture and they are smoking fast on this controller. I plan to purchase an second card for my system. I hope this review is helpful to someone...

Pros: Based on the other reviews, I figure this is a good device, but, there are limitations.
NewEgg is a great vendor, I've had nothing but great delivery and products from them.

Cons: Do your homework, I was not extensive enough. There is a compatibility list on their website, read it! I didn't. Therefore, it appears that my dell motherboard on my xps 630i is not compatible, nor are my WD 1.5 Tb Caviar Green drives. I was planning on doing RAID 5.

Other Thoughts: Now for the clencher. Call their support line and listen to their recording because that is all you're going to get. There is no immediate live support. To top it off, their recording says they will be shut down from Dec 25, 2008 to sometime in Jan 09. What!!!! This is March 2010!!!! So, I figure they closed their facility in the U.S. and are operating soley from their international offices. Yes, there is web support, but it is by email, not a chat situation. Really, give me a break.
So, I will give this to my son, he can buy the MB that it works with and the drives that work with it and maybe, just maybe, things will go fine for him.

Pros: Fast and reliable card. 256 MB on board RAM. Setup was rather simple. My 4 x 146GB 15K SAS Fujitsu drives are benchmarking at 200 MB/sec read while using 64 K Blocks in RAID 10. I am using this on a SuperMicro 1U rack server 6014h-32.

Cons: It took several hours to initialize the drives. It supports a backup battery ( enabling safe Write caching ) but does not come with one. The additional Backup battery is expensive. Does not come with a MiniSAS to SATA adapter cable, only a MiniSAS to MiniSAS cable. So make sure you add one of those to your cart as well and yeah that is expensive too.

Other Thoughts: The card performs well on Windows Server 2008 R2 and supports a wide range of block sizes. Its performing about 20 MB/sec faster than my workstation's setup which is the same drives but in RAID 0 and only two of them, using the built in marvel controller that came with my ASUS motherboard. For anyone with a supermicro server, I highly recommend getting a card like this, instead of using the built in controller, or the addon card they sell. If anyone is interested I have posted benchmarks of this on my blog. So yeah its expensive, but you get what you pay for. As always newegg shipped it quickly