HighPoint launches RAID enabled USB 3.0 host controller, throws in some Mac support by VR-Zone.com

We've already written about HighPoint's peculiar RocketU 1144A USB 3.0 card and now the company has gone and made things even more confusing with the introduction of the RocketU 1144AR. The R on the end of the model name stands for RAID and no, we have no idea why you'd need a four port USB 3.0 controller with RAID support. Oh and for those of you that own a Mac or maybe a Hackingtosh, HighPoint has also launched a couple of OS X compatible cards.

Let's start with the RocketU 1144AR, which is as far as we can tell, exactly the same card as the 1144A, but support for RAID 0, 1, 10, 5 and JBOD under Windows 7. The card also works in Windows Server 2008, but without RAID 5 support and HighPoint is even providing an open source Linux driver for the card. Interestingly the drivers for the two cards are totally different and the RocketU 1144AR comes with a driver that seemingly identifies the card as a SCSI controller. The details are sparse as to how this all works, but even so we can't see too many users looking at hooking up four external USB 3.0 drives to one of these card for some RAID action rather than getting an external enclosure with built in RAID support.



As for the Mac cards, well, they're the same as the RocketU 1022A (a two port card) and the RocketU 1144AR, although both cards support RAID 0, 1 and JBOD in OS X with the 1144AR version also supporting RAID 10 and 5. OS X 10.5 or later is required for the cards to work and HighPoint is providing its own drivers for OS X which lacks native USB 3.0 support.

Source: HighPoint