Highpoint announced what the firm claims to be the fastest SATA RAID controller : The Rocket RAID 2522 can deliver a sustained data transfer rate of 1.2 GB/s, according to the manufacturer.

Highpoint is offering the new controller card for environments that are looking for fast data transfer rates, but shy away from the cost of SSD drives to build up massive storage capacity. According to the company, the 2522 card can scale to a performance of 1200 MB/s by striping together drives in a RAID array.

The controller card has two external mini-SAS connectors and can support up to eight SATA I or SATA II hard drives out of the box. Using a port multiplier, the PCIe-based 2522 can handle up to 40 hard drives, Highpoint said. Supported RAID modes include RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 and JBOD. Users can monitor and administer all connected storage devices via a web interface.

Highpoint did not release the price of the Rocket RAID 2522.