HighPoint Tech RocketRAID 1820A
8 Channel PCI-X to SATA RAID 5 Host Adapter

     ATA RAID and cheap hard drives have already driven SCSI prices down to rock bottom, but SATA RAID may just make it obsolete... HighPoint Technologies just sent over their flagship product, the RocketRAID 1820A. This is the first true 64-bit SATA RAID 5 Controller I've seen, and it may spell the end for SCSI hard drives and controllers. Let me explain why... Previously, we have only seen 2, maybe 4 port SATA controllers. Most of them have been budget controllers targeted towards the average user who wants to experience the speed of RAID 0. Not one of them are designed for servers, at least not until the RocketRAID 1820A came along. The 1820A is a true 64-bit card compatible with the new PCI-X, as well as the older 64-bit PCI slots that you see on today's server motherboards. This is a server card only, it is not compatible with your every day desktop motherboard. With the 1820A, you get 8 SATA ports that are compatible with true SATA hard drives or ATA hard drives with SATA adapters. To prove that HighPoint was thinking of servers, it is compatible with numerous operating systems including Linux, SuSE, FreeBSD, and of course pretty much every version of Windows from 98 to Windows 64-bit. Yes, even the beta version of Windows 64-bit for the AMD64. As far as RAID levels go, we have RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 and JBOD. So as you can see, this card is in direct competition with the best SCSI RAID cards on the market. However, should we expect the same kind of performance and reliability SCSI delivers? Let's find out!

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