



Okay, I know this is a somewhat dangerous experiment but I have this card running a RAID 5 array comprised of 7 WD RE4-GP recertified drives. That's 6 drives in RAID 5 with a hot spare for 9TBs of usable space. I have only had this running for a few weeks but so far I have no problems. LSI utilty for Windows server is great. Performance seems to be quite good as well with write speeds around 80-100mb/s and reads at around 120-130mb/s. So, for a low power controller with no onboard memory, it is doing a respectable job.

Very fast array creation and initialization. SATA 6Gb/s and SAS 12Gb/s interface capability. Will happily confirm the array integrity after a sudden power loss, unfortunately had to do it a few times before I broke down and bought the LSICVM02 addon kit, another $200. Read and write speeds are pretty amazing on this controller and the rated I/O performance feels like it's there. SSD Guard feature ensures that TRIM is monitored and maintained.

Second HighPoint controller with no issues. Paired with four WD20EFRX 2TB IntelliPower in RAID 5.






- Works out of the box on FreeBSD 11 - No issues with 4Kn drives








FAST, does SAS 6GB/s, can use one or more SSD for cache with the CacheCade option. mature drivers and config utility. Am running a pair of Samsung 830 SSD's that are mirrored and used as cache, and 4 2TB SAS drives, and this config runs easily 2-3x in speed what my 3ware 9750-8i was getting with 4 2TB SAS drives. Makes dealing with video editing smooth and fast, OS boots up a lot faster. If I wanted, I could put several SSD's in a RAID0 as cache and it would be even faster, but my config maintains a level of safety while greatly increasing speed. The CacheVault option is good too, with that attached instead of a battery, it uses a supercap to back up its RAM onto a flash when power is removed. A supercap should in theory have a longer lifespan than a BBU.