Highpoint RocketRaid 404
edited by Ramil Tranquilino
July 20, 2002
Manufactured by: Highpoint Technologies
Intro
You can't go far into PC technology without hearing about RAID. Formerly the domain of servers and the stupidly rich, the advent of IDE RAID has brought it to the masses. Well almost. I'm not going to explain RAID here; it would take up too much space. If you want to find out more about it there is an excellent guide at SERVERWATCH. If you don't know what RAID is I suggest you read that first.
For the average computer user, there are two ways to get RAID. If you're lucky, you may have a RAID controller already built into your motherboard. Failing that, you'll need a PCI RAID controller. That's what I'm looking at today. A PCI offering from Highpoint. Highpoint are by no means new to the IDE RAID business. Their chips have provided IDE Raid support to Abit and other motherboards since the KT133.
Highpoint Rocket RAID 404
The RocketRAID 404 is a 4 channel ATA-133 RAID PCI Raid controller based on the HPT 374 chip, with support for RAID 0, 1, 0+1 and JBOD (Spanning). It has support for Hot Swapping and Hot Spare Disk Swap Over. But more on these later.
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1 x RocketRAID 404 PCI Card
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4 x ATA-133 IDE Cables
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1 x Manual
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1 x Driver Disk (Floppy)
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2 x ATA RAID Management Software disks (Floppy)
The inclusion of the IDE Cables is a nice touch, meaning all you need is hard drives and you're ready to go. The manual is a mixed bag. On one hand it does go through every step of installation, has a decent explanation of the various RAID levels and is generally quite useful, but it is written in broken English. It's not so bad so as to make it unreadable, but in a few places I had to reread a sentence a few times to make sure it meant what I thought it did. Not a major gripe, but I'd suggest re-reading certain parts if you are unclear on the exact meaning.
The Driver disk you get with the Controller has drivers for Win9x, 2k and XP. Linux users can grab a Linux driver from HighPoint. As well as the Driver Disk you get the ATA Raid Management Software on 2 Floppies. The Software itself is pretty handy. It allows you to do everything you can in the controller's BIOS under Windows, you can create an Array, delete an array, manage the spare disk pool etc. You cannot make changes to an array if you are currently booted from it. The software also allows you to setup an email alert, using a SMTP server to send a warning email when a disk or array fails. A handy feature for unattended machines.
Features
Now the RocketRAID 404 boasts some impressive features, which I will explain:
4 Channels ATA133 RAID Host Controller - As a 4 channel ATA133 RAID adapter, the RocketRAID 404 supports up to 8 IDE hard disk drives, and provides multi level RAID support including RAID 0, 1, 0/1, and JBOD. It imposes no restrictions on hard disk capacity, and will meet the requirements of most all business and personal applications.
IDE Hot Disk Swapping - Previously the domain of SCSI Drives, you can now hot swap IDE Drives, it's only for use with Specially Designed HDD Racks though, and I wouldn’t be too keen on ripping out IDE Drives while the system was running without one.
Hot Spare Disk - Basically you can have a spare HDD in the Spare Disk Pool so that if a drive in your RAID1 or 0+1 Array fails the system will automatically rebuild the array using the spare disk, without user intervention.
Alarm Beeper - If a drive fails there is a Beeper on the card itself which will sound. Probably quite a useful feature, but if you're using a RAID 0 array, the first sign of Array Failure is usually instant death.
Data Security - Data security features based on RAID 1 mirroring, hot-spare, and hot swap capabilities. For RAID 1 and 0/1, the RocketRAID 404 provides disk mirroring, hot-spare options for automatic array-rebuilds, hot-swap support for swapping failed disks on the fly (works with Hot-Swap capable mobile racks such as Rocket Mate), and disk failure notification (audible alarms, visual warning messages). These features provide a high level of security and data protection against hard disk failure.
Windows Based Utility - Windows-based utility for easy RAID configuration/management. In addition to the BIOS configuration utility, the RocketRAID 404 includes Windows-based RAID configuration software. The software provides and intuitive interface, which is designed to make RAID management easy, even for the inexperienced user.
Specifications
| Host side interface | 32bit/33MHz PCI |
| Device side interface | ATA133 (IDE) |
| RAID controller IC | HighPoint HPT374 UDMA ATA133 RAID Controller |
| Number of IDE channels | 4 Channels |
| Maximum number of drives | 8 hard disk drives |
| Supported Hard drives | Up to ATA133 |
| Supported RAID Levels | RAID 0 (2-8 disks), RAID 1 (2 disks), 0/1 (4 disks), JBOD (2-8 disks) |
| Supported OSs | Windows 98/ME, Windows NT4.0, Win2000, Linux |
| RAID Management Tool | RAID Configuration and Management |
| GUI Function | RAID Configuration and Management (compatible with BIOS) |
| Additional Features | Bootable disk or disk array support Disk hot spare for automatic mirror rebuilding Hot-swapping failed hard drives for RAID 1 or 0/1 Error alarm with on-card beeper Automatic e-mail notification when error occurs Large LBA support capacity exceeding 137GB |