Review on 💾 Optimized Highpoint RocketStor 6628A Thunderbolt 3 2nd Gen. RAID Enclosure with 8 Bays by Chad Sornsin

(review updated 2 weeks later) I'm increasing my overall rating to 4 stars after 2 weeks of active use . Once I was able to initialize and rebuild the RAID5, the 8-drive 6628A ran fine over Thunderbolt 3 with my MacPro. I'm getting consistent and expected read/write speeds when hard-managing this RAID enclosure with multiple 4k and 8k projects (native RED and ProRes Raw files). If I had the opportunity to work properly out of the box I would give 5 stars. I believe their latest WebGUI used for initialization is very unstable/bug. The fact that their support team sent me a link to a much older version of the WebGUI (running my new Thunderbolt3 MacPro tower) leads me to believe the problem lies with their software. After 2 weeks I am now satisfied with the case. and like the fact that I can manually select the drives in it. I believe choosing the right enterprise-class drive helps ensure the quality and longevity of these systems. I have several other RAID enclosures with enterprise drives and haven't had a failure in over 10 years. First review below: -------- (original post) I was hesitant about this purchase with other reviews not only on Revine but elsewhere. Over the last 10 years I have had several HighPoint RAID controllers (RocketRaid 3522 PCI/Mini-SAS and RocketRaid 6328 Thunderbolt 2), both for earlier MacPro cases. I worked extensively with these RAID systems while running a commercial post production business. Honestly I bought these old raid controllers because of the price but they worked as advertised day in and day out for 10 years. I thought the other reviews were more PC based so there could potentially be some issues with Thunderbolt 3 being more native Mac I/O. Additionally, the Highpoint 6628A product page offers two iMacs and a MacPro laptop (not a PC). I looked at other options like the new Promise Raid MPX, OWC, and QNAP module, but I really liked the 6628A's Thunderbolt3 feature set and have had better luck with previous HighPoint products. I am shopping with 8 new Seagate Exos 7E8 drives which are at the top of the recommended/approved 3.5" enterprise drives. After receiving the HP 6628A, I install the new drives as instructed. I've done this many times with other 8-bay raid cases, so this is nothing new. I load a WebGUI (basically an interface that allows you to set up/initialize the RAID configuration and control the RAID once set up). I download the latest and only WebGUI from the Highpoint 6628A download page (RSWebGUI_Mac_v2.19.1_19_11_29). That's where the pain begins. After a simple .dmg install I open the WebGUI and it doesn't connect or communicate with the new raid controller. I get an error message. I review all troubleshooting methods in both user manual, installation guide and online resources. I'll uninstall/reinstall and try again. Now the 6628A sees it and I initialize the drives in a standard RAID5 configuration. After RAID5 is initialized I run a hard drive speed test to see how it performs. I got just over 1000MB/s writing and over 1400MB/s reading which is what I was expecting. After about 10 minutes, the read/write speeds dropped to around 300MB/s, which is unusable. I open the WebGUI and get the connection error again. I've uninstalled/reinstalled multiple times with no success. My RAID5 is set up but reading/writing is terrible. I am contacting HighPoint (HP) customer support who are basically filling out an online ticket form. They quickly come back to me with a link to download another OLD WebGUI (WebGUI_Mac_v2.12.0_19_07_26.dmg). Now it works and now I can see my RAID but it shows one of my disks offline. Automatic recovery will start. It takes about 2 hours for each TB, so restoring my single offline 8TB drive took over 16 hours. It ends the next day. My raid is online again. All 8 drives look fine according to WebGUI. All pass the SMART test and show no bad sectors. After about 20 minutes, the speed decreases again. It shows a drive offline and starts automatic recovery. I'll wait another 16+ hours for the restore to complete. I literally wanted to return the 6628A because all my drives were brand new and tested; However, after the 2nd automatic rebuild, my RAID5 was stable for the last 2 days. I was editing TB 8k Red Raw and was working on the 6628A for about 11 hours a day. The jury is still out, but I have hope that this raid case will work. Here's what I don't understand. If someone is looking at a $1,300 raid enclosure and is likely to spend another $2,000 on hard drives, they are most likely using a newer Mac with Thunderbolt 3. Your current web interface (v.2.19) on page 6628A has this Don't work on either the new 2019 MacPro Tower or the 2019 iMac Pro (both work fine with the old HP Raid Controller). How can they not test this on HighPoint with the latest Mac and OS? Also sending an older WebGUI (v2.12) to reinitialize with multiple RAID rebuilds is a problem. Again, my PSU is fine, Thunderbolt 3 cable is fine, 8 new 8TB hard drives are fine, so I would recommend just one enclosure along with WebGUI. It ended up being a 3 day setup headache that I never want to repeat. painful attitude. As I said, I'm cautiously optimistic, but the jury is still out.