HighPoint RocketRAID 2302 RAID Controller Review

Installation

Installation of RocketRAID 2302 is very easy. Simply install it on any available PCI Express slot from your motherboard, install the hard disk drives and turn on your PC to setup your RAID array. As mentioned, even though it is a PCI Express x1 card you can install RocketRAID 2302 on any PCI Express slot, including x4, x8 and x16.

After turning on your PC, you will need to press Control H to enter the card’s control panel. However, we highly recommend you to first upgrade the card’s BIOS. This is done by downloading the latest BIOS from the manufacturer’s website (the file contains both the BIOS file and the programming software) and running the program, unzipping the file first, of course. You will have to do this procedure by installing the card on any computer with Windows, and you will need to do that on another computer if you are building a new system.

The procedure is similar from what is described on our How to Setup a RAID System tutorial. The only difference is that before doing anything you need “Initialize” each drive. If you don’t do this the control panel will complain that there are no RAID-compatible drives on the system.

One thing we noticed is that RocketRAID 2302 doesn’t allow us to select the strip size that will be used.

Figure 4: RocketRAID 2302 control panel.

Next you will need to install the operating system. Don’t forget to create the necessary floppy disk (read the above mentioned tutorial for more details), by running the CD-ROM that comes with the product on any computer and selecting the appropriate option.

After installing the operating system you should install the control panel for the RAID card. Thru this control panel you can check the status of the array, change the array level, turn any of the disks off so it can be removed with the computer turned on (hot swap), access the control panel remotely through a web-based interface and even get e-mail notifications if something goes wrong with your array.