With HighPoint's recent launch of its RocketU USB3 PCIe x4 cards claiming to deliver 20Gbps across the 4 ports, they have now launched an external double bay HDD dock capable of delivering 10Gbps of bandwidth using two USB3 connections. The RocketStor comes in two editions - SMART RAID and SMART Backup and both models can handle 2.5” and 3.5” HDDs and SSDs.
The SMART RAID model is designed specifically for Mac OS X, where two identical HDDs or SSDs can be inserted and operated in either RAID 1 for mirroring or RAID 0 for performance. It is bundled with a 2-port USB3 PCIe x4 2.0 RAID controller. The SMART Backup model is designed to work with a PC and includes data backup software that can be configured to backup data with the touch of the "SNAP" button on the dock. It is compatible with Windows 7/Vista and Server 2008.
As the PC version is not bundled with a controller, it's worth noting that it will be practically pointless connecting both ports into the ports of the same PCIe x1 USB3 controller, as both will share the same PCIe x1 lane, creating a 5Gbps bottleneck, similar to just having a single USB3 connection! As HDDs cannot deliver much quicker than 200MB/s apart from burst transfers, two SATA3 SSDs would be required to take advantage of the extra bandwidth offered by having two ports. While the PC model appears to lack the hardware RAID capability, it should still be possible to create a software RAID array, such as through Windows disk management.
