Highpoint support of 35XX cards discontinued

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lifespeed

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May 14, 2011
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Well, I found out that using the Hitachi 5K3000 drives with my Highpoint 3520 SATAII RAID card causes a 3 minute hang during boot at classPNP.sys. This could have become a problem when I migrated from RAID5 to RAID6, but is not acceptable. The PC does boot, and the RAID array works fine. But nobody likes these kind of flaws in their system.

I contacted support, and they stated they will not address the compatibility issue for the 35XX cards, only for their newer 43XX (SAS) and 27XX (SATA III) cards.

The 35XX series of cards is only 3 years old. I find this lack of support by Highpoint unacceptable, and is, to me, an indication that they are not a serious, quality vendor that may be relied upon. I think rather than take the easy route and switch my array to a newer Highpoint card I will select a vendor that can be trusted to support their hardware.

[NOTE: This series of posts was moved out of the Hitachi Harddisks thread for obvious reasons]
 
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nitrobass24

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Dec 26, 2010
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I find this lack of support by Highpoint unacceptable, and is, to me, an indication that they are not a serious, quality vendor that may be relied upon.
The price of their crap products (IMO) didn't give you that impression? /sarcasm

In all seriousness though, you dont see updates for many things that old either.
 

lifespeed

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May 14, 2011
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The price of their crap products (IMO) didn't give you that impression? /sarcasm

In all seriousness though, you dont see updates for many things that old either.
The 3520 is a $450 Intel IOP341 card, not crap (though one can argue their support is).

RAID cards are typically used longer than video cards. Three years is not old.
 

Patrick

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Dec 21, 2010
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The 3520 is a $450 Intel IOP341 card, not crap (though one can argue their support is).

RAID cards are typically used longer than video cards. Three years is not old.
With RAID cards, the processor used is important for things like throughput, but the software/ firmware are really the features that set a card apart. Look at the Areca 1680 series and the Adaptec 5800 series and both use the IOP348 processor but have very different performance and manageability features. Likewise, looking at a PC of today, you can still run Windows ME but Windows 7 (or on basically the same hardware) OS X will probably provide a better experience. The vendors that provide longer term support tend to be those that invest a lot of money on the software translating to higher sales prices. I think that is what nitrobass24 was getting at.

For many people, Highpoint cards work well, but they are not exactly on par with some of the more traditional players in terms of firmware/ software and support.
 

nitrobass24

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The 3520 is a $450 Intel IOP341 card, not crap (though one can argue their support is).

RAID cards are typically used longer than video cards. Three years is not old.
Well Areca doesnt make an 8port IOP341 card, but their 12port card is almost twice as expensive as the 3520.
They have an 8 port IOP333 (slower) with SATA connectors instead of SFF and its the same price as a 3520.

Its more than just the hardware...obviously all these cards are basically the same hardware wise....except they have different features, speed, etc.

In the end you get what you pay for.

With RAID cards, the processor used is important for things like throughput, but the software/ firmware are really the features that set a card apart. Look at the Areca 1680 series and the Adaptec 5800 series and both use the IOP348 processor but have very different performance and manageability features. Likewise, looking at a PC of today, you can still run Windows ME but Windows 7 (or on basically the same hardware) OS X will probably provide a better experience. The vendors that provide longer term support tend to be those that invest a lot of money on the software translating to higher sales prices. I think that is what nitrobass24 was getting at.

For many people, Highpoint cards work well, but they are not exactly on par with some of the more traditional players in terms of firmware/ software and support.
Yea basically.
 

lifespeed

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May 14, 2011
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Yeah, I'm thinking about replacing it with an Areca 1880i. Any experience with this card and the aforementioned drives?
 

nitrobass24

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I have it and its the best/fastest card I have ever used. Make sure you get the BBU and enable write caching.
 

odditory

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Dec 23, 2010
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@lifespeed I would run not walk away from that highpoint and never touch highpoint again. as its already been stated just because a device shares a common component like a RoC with that of other brands of raid cards doesn't mean they were created equal, not like they're Nvidia video cards where there's a reference design that gets cloned by OEMs. and i'm a little surprised that with as long as you've been around at places like avsforum and my original storage server thread, you wouldn't have heard about how well areca cards work and especially with hitachi drives. :) the 1880i + Hitachi 5k3000's is still the sweet spot for home storage if you value hardware-based raid.

something to keep in mind though is that at least for home movie & media storage, the trend will continue to be toward non-striped parity schemes as software based offerings like Flexraid and equivalents get more mature.
 
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lifespeed

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May 14, 2011
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and i'm a little surprised that with as long as you've been around at places like avsforum and my original storage server thread, you wouldn't have heard about how well areca cards work and especially with hitachi drives. :) the 1880i + Hitachi 5k3000's is still the sweet spot for home storage if you value hardware-based raid.

something to keep in mind though is that at least for home movie & media storage, the trend will continue to be toward non-striped parity schemes as software based offerings like Flexraid and equivalents get more mature.
My ownership of the Highpoint card goes back to 2008, if you can believe that. If I knew then what I know now . . . but RAID cards are expensive, and there really has been no compelling reason to spend $800+ on a new card when the current one worked fine. At least until I switched to RAID6 with 3TB Hitachi drives. It still works fine, if one can overlook the slow boot problem. No problems with performance or data integrity.

But my next card will definitely be Areca. I am not impressed with the software parity solutions despite the cost advantage.