Introduction

Chances are that by now you've heard something about SATA or Serial ATA, and many of you may even have it onboard your motherboards, especially if you bought your motherboard in the last 6 months. Most of these onboard solutions give you 2 SATA headers for RAID and possibly a third ATA133 header to be used in conjuction with one of the SATA headers and an adaptor in a RAID configuration. It maybe possible that you've already used those 2 SATA headers, or perhaps your board is of an older design or simply doesn't carry SATA. Whatever the case you can still add SATA to your system with the likes of a PCI card designed for that purpose, which we have one of here today, the RocketRAID 1520. This is a 2 Channel SATA RAID card supporting JBOD, RAID 1 and RAID 0, so let's get this review started and take a look at the obligatory stolen from the website specs.

Specifications

Host side interface 32bit, 33MHz/66MHz PC
Disk Interface Serial ATA/IDE
Number of IDE channels 2
Maximum number of drives 2
Supported Hard drives Serial ATA hard disks, IDE hard disk drives (with RocketHead 100 converter)
Supported RAID Levels
RAID 0, RAID 1, JBOD
Supported OSs Windows 98/ME, Windows NT4.0, Win2000, Windows XP, Linux (SuSE, Red Hat, Caldera, Turbo), and FreeBSD
RAID Management Tool RAID Configuration and Management
GUI Function RAID Configuration and Management (compatible with BIOS)
Kit Contents RocketRAID 1520 card
2 Serial ATA cables
Driver software
RAID Management software (Windows version)
User's manual
2 RocketHead 100 IDE-to-SATA converters (optional version)

Additional Features
Automatic e-mail notification when error occurs
Bootable array support
Large LBA support (drives larger than 137GB)

The RocketRAID 1520 is now available with, and without the RocketHead 100 converters. The first option includes 2 RocketHead 100 converters. The second option is a card-only version (the converters must be purchased separately), and is ideal for those that only require SATA hard disk drive support.

The Card

Unlike the 404 card, the box for the 1520 is much more colourful and enticing, which considering the nature of SATA isn't surprising, as manufacturers make a push to get SATA into all aspects of the marketplace. Inside the soft foam padding of the box we find the 1520 card, a manual, 3 floppy disks (nooooo, bad Highpoint! CD is the name of the game) and also 2 SATA data cables. I'm very pleased to see that Highpoint have supplied the data cables to go with the card, it's a nice extra that many users probably wouldn't consider until they opened the box and realised they needed them.

The Card itself is more or less the same as any other ATA card adaptor although you will immediately notice the cards barer and lower profile thanks to the missing 40 Pin headers. Being a SATA card, those old 40 Pin IDE headers have been replaced with the tiny SATA data headers, and coupled with the SATA data cables make for some really thin and easily manageable cabling indeed.

The SATA headers sit to the top edge of the card so that once installed the headers can be easily accessed from the side panel of your PC. In almost the middle of the card we find the brains of the card, the HPT372a Controller and to the left of this is the BIOS chip. Now some of the more astute among you will be thinking hold on, this is a SATA adaptor right? So how come it's using the same controller as found in ATA133 solutions?

Well basically the HPT372a processes the data and moves it thru the PCI bus, but the data coming into the card first passes through a Marvell 88i8030 Serializer-Deserializer chip (1 for each channel). So what does this mean for the end user? That basically you will be limited by the HPT372a to ATA133 speeds, and not the 150 speeds promised by the SATA interface. The card itself is capable of being run on a 66MHz PCI Bus, but if you are running it on a standard 33MHz Bus you will be limited by this anyway. The card is covered in resistors and also a splattering of capacitors which makes the card look quite busy, yet still maintains quite a low profile.

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