HighPoint 4-Port M.2 SSD7105 PCIe Gen3 Bootable NVMe RAID Controller for Windows & Linux Systems.

The physical installation of the card and drives was straightforward. However, setting up the RAID configuration requires booting from a UEFI drive with Highpoint's software installed, which is less user-friendly compared to other RAID controllers that allow direct access during boot. This process demands some technical knowledge, making it less suitable for beginners.Once installed, the drive performed well, and I successfully loaded my Server 2022 installation after installing the necessary drivers. The performance met my expectations, and the monitoring software was adequate. I recommend this product if you're looking for an affordable NVMe RAID PCIe card.

When Apple's Mojave macOS included an upgrade to the Firmware/ROM BIOS of my Mac Pro 5,1 (with this Firmware/BIOS upgrade, my Mac Pro 5,1 Model now has a Boot ROM Version of 140.0.0.0.0 instead of High Sierra's Boot ROM Version of 138.0.0.0.0), this allowed my Mac Pro's motherboard to use NVMe SSDs on 1st Gen Mac Pros where this was not possible under High Sierra and all other previous macOS versions.Then, even though High Point makes it clear that their SSD7101A-1 device was never designed or tested to boot anything, when one of their SSD7101A-1 devices is equipped with a Samsung 970 Pro NVMe SSD (1TB), is then installed in PCIe 2 slot three in my Mac Pro and my previous Mojave 10.14.2 boot SSD image is restored onto the 970 Pro NVMe SSD with Time Machine, guess what?With no High Point driver or other software added of any kind, my Mac Pro 5,1 boots Mojave 10.14.2 just fine!Bifurcation problems? Nope.Please see the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test results attached.I believe that this is just wonderful (although High Point's technical support folks still insist that their SSD7101A-1 device is a RAID device only and cannot be used to boot anything).Note that only Apple's newest iMac Pro can get similar speeds on a boot SSD, but in order to do that, Apple uses a proprietary Samsung NVMe SSD on a special motherboard.Just to be clear: My Mac Pro 5,1 can now boot Mojave from a 970 Pro 1TB NVMe SSD with R/W speeds near 3k MB/s and it also boot Win 10 Pro from another 970 Pro 1TB NVMe SSD with the same R/W speeds. Both of these 970 Pros are mounted on this High Point device in slots 1 (top) and 2 (second from top) with no other software or drivers.Now what do I do with the other two M.2 NVMe blade slots?Thank you High Point (and Apple)!

While this was the exact type of card I was looking for, the terrible heatsink design and ridiculously bad coil whine makes it unusable. With drives installed, the cheap screws won't seat the heatsink again - the threads are just tapped into the aluminum, and cut off-center. Even in use, the horrible squealing that I can only assume is coil whine also makes this unusable.

This card uses a PLX chip to allow for installation and usage without the need for bifurcation. The system will see the drives as independent drives in the BIOS and in the OS until the driver and RAID management software is installed and configured. Most motherboards that allow for booting to NVME drives will allow you to boot to one of the drives installed on this card if they are not configured in RAID.The "RAID" on this card is purely in software/driver for the OS. Not installing the Highpoint software and RAID manager will allow all the drives to be detected and used as individual drives or using the OS's RAID software. For example, you can use Windows Disk Manager to setup basic software RAIDs using the drives installed on this card without the need to install additional drivers/software. You could also use Windows Storage Spaces for modern Windows OSs. TrueNAS, Linus, etc will also allow you to use the drives as individual drives without the need for the Highpoint driver or software.If you choose to use the Highpoint RAID software/driver, then you cannot boot to the drives that are setup in RAID and recovery operations will be very limited if needed. There aren't really any advantages to using the Highpoint software RAID driver/software, because the OS's own RAID solution like Windows Storage Spaces or ZFS are much better options.

There are two units from Highpoint. This one (the 7202) requires you to go through a few rather non-intuitive steps to get Windows to install on it if you are going to use this as a boot device. Once you follow their instructions (kudos to Highpoint for providing clear instructions) this unit works very well!There is a different unit from Highpoint - the SDD6202a that works a little easier if you want a RAID boot array. It is driverless and once the device is set via the dip-switches, behaves like a simple single drive (but is RAID 1 or 0 under the covers). I REALLY like the 6202a. It (the 6202a) has the added bonus of having LEDs that clearly indicate the status of the drives in the array. You can also set the software to monitor the array and email you if there is a failure. Both the 7202 and the 6202 will do the email thing. I did return the 7202 and bought a 5-pack of the 6202a units. These are wonderful, solid and so far appear to be stupid simple and reliable! Highpoint is also a really decent company and even reached out to me for a discussion when I sent them a few questions. A+ Highpoint!