To RAID or not to RAID?, that is the question!

igbayirdbay

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Oct 24, 2011
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Can anyone tell me if you can use a Highpoint RocketRAID 640 controller just to add 4 SATA III ports to your computer? I have an Asus Maximus IV Extreme - Z that comes with onboard Marvell controller for 2 6Gbps ports and 2 additional 6Gbps ports onboard. The other 4 internal SATA ports are 3Gbps. I am unsure of the eSATA port speed(new build). I am considering adding the above card, but not for a RAID. I have backup on USB 3.0 but still need more SATA ports at 6Gbps. I have one 120 GB SSD and 2 3TB HDD's with a Blu-ray writer using the 4 I have. I need another optical drive, so I want to move the HDD's to the add-on card if at all possible. I have a core i7 2600K with 16GB ram and am running W7U64 with a GTX580 1.5GB GPU. I have a 1200w PSU, so I'm not concerned about having enough to run it all. If there is another controller/add-on that will accomplish what I need, feel free to suggest! Thanks in advance.
 

igbayirdbay

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Oct 24, 2011
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Thanks for your response. Since I am also looking forward to when SSD's come down in price and up in reliability, I am planning for these ports to have SSD's to replace the HDD's as well. Because the price of the large SSD's gets higher per GB as drive size increases, I figure I will need several smaller drives at least in the short term. I am exploring options for upgrades while keeping an eye on the future. I may have one optical drive cloning to another while using a third for live recording. I'll need a couple decent sized SSD's for video compression and storage on some large HDD's. A RAID may be in my future someday as well, but for now, I just wanted to know if this card could be used for extra SATA III ports without using the RAID feature. If I decided to make a RAID later, I would not need new hardware other than possibly drives.