Final thoughts, right2reply, where2buy, awards, further reading
We've had a bit of a rocky ride with the RocketRAID 2300. There are some things we like about it and some things we don't.
Good things first. The bundle is adequate and the manual thick enough to cover the card's main capabilities. It's quick to install and setup, with an easy-to-use BIOS.
The web GUI is clean and fairly intuitive, allowing local or remote administration of the 2300's arrays. And it's great to see support for multiple OSes, too.
The management console, however, is something we don't like. It is in part a matter of taste but we think that it's not half as easy to use as the web GUI.
We didn't like the hit that our test system took when rebuilding arrays - the whole system became less responsive. The hit to disk performance would be bad enough without the whole system also slowing down.
It seems very likely that the 1x PCIe interface is limiting the card's read performance. HighPoint makes a 4x version of the card - the 2310 - and that's likely to offer considerably more bandwidth.
It seems that for every good point, we can find an equal opposite. Most significantly, we reckon that an on-board RAID solution would be a match for the RocketRAID 2300, without needing to splash out near to £100 extra.
But, if you need more than either solution can offer, you'll have to pay out for an add-in board with extra bandwidth.
Upping the budget to £110 for the four-lane 2310 might help matters but only if some of our other gripes about its little brother don't concern you.
HEXUS certification
While we aren't going to give this card an award, it did pass HEXUS Labs testing without errors, making it a product fit for sale. So, we give it HEXUS certification.
HighPoint RocketRAID 2300
HEXUS Where2Buy
You can purchase the HighPoint RocketRAID 2300 for around £90 here.
HEXUS Right2Reply
Flora Huang, Highpoint's sales account manager, was kind enough to submit a HEXUS Right2Reply.
"HighPoint continues to lead the way in driving affordable RAID data protection to market for desktops and workstations. By offering the best price/performance ratio in its class, the RocketRAID 2300 is the right choice for cost-effective, highly-dependable RAID storage solutions.
The RocketRAID 2300 offers 64-bit platform support, multiple logical drive support, online capacity expansion, RAID level migration, web-based Array management software and dynamic bad sector repair and reallocation. These controllers also supports advanced SATA features, including 3Gb/s speed, Native Command Queuing (NCQ), staggered spin-up, and drive hot swap support.
The RocketRAID 2300 offers you true safety that on-board RAID solutions can’t. Same as all HighPoint RocketRAID series products, the RAID information of the RocketRAID2300 is saved in each member disk of the array. In the case when the card is defective, all you have to do is to swap the old card for a new one – no data is lost and you can use your array right away without re-configuring and setting anything. As to on-board RAID solution, once the motherboard is defective, your data will be gone with the wind.
In short, the RocketRAID 2300 is the ideal choice for enthusiasts, power users, SMBs, and entry level storage. It comes with a low-profile bracket in the package and can be configured into a 1-U server with the use of a riser card delivering high performance to users".
HEXUS related reading
HEXUS.net - Mass storage – all news and reviews
HEXUS.net - reviews
:: The joys of redundancy: XFX's Revo 64
HEXUS.net - reviews
:: Boston SAS RAID -X- Pack (LSI MegaRAID 8408E, Seagate ST3750640AS & Supermicro SATA M35)
