# Using a Highpoint Rocketraid 640L on FreeBSD 13



## dsagra (Apr 18, 2021)

Hi all,
I just installed FreeBSD 13 on a system with one HighPoint RocketRaid 640L controllers with 2 disks attached, that are configured as Raid 1 on controller's BIOS.

With that being said, during system startup, controller is recognised as "AHCI" and disks as ada0 and ada1 (so, no single disk as I'd expect).
Manufacturer's website claims drivers are integrated from FreeBSD 9 on [1], so I am wondering if there's a specific driver that I should load during startup or perhaps rebuilding the kernel to make sure RAID configuration works? (I know I can use ZFS built-in raid features, but I'd still like to offload this task to the controller, if possible)

I am attaching output from pciconf -lv and dmesg to this discussion.

[1] https://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/series_rr600-specifications.htm

Has anyone else experienced similar issues with recent FreeBSD versions?
Thank you


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## sko (Apr 19, 2021)

I suspect this is what you'd call a fakeraid-controller - i.e. a simple HBA that needs some special software to read the disk setup from the controller. In those cases it is _ALWAYS_ the better option to use the OS-native sw-raid, as it will not be dependant on that HBA and its (proprietary) software counterpart.

Just use the single disks and ZFS or geom-raid; HW-RAID is a remnant of the past anyways (except maybe for the one OS that still doesn't support modern filesystems and/or sw-raid)


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## dsagra (Apr 19, 2021)

yes, thank you for your reply sko; I contacted manufacturer about this, too, let's see what they reply, but if they can't provide any driver or support, I'll obviously go with the RAID 1 on ZFS solution


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## fcreid (Aug 1, 2021)

dsagra, I just moved from FreeBSD 12.2 to 13.0 today and found the hptrr (Highpoint RAID) driver is no longer in the default kernel. You will need to build a custom kernel with:

# Highpoint RocketRaid
device          hptrr
device          scbus
device          da


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## SirDice (Aug 2, 2021)

fcreid said:


> You will need to build a custom kernel


Just add it to /boot/loader.conf.

```
hptrr_load="YES"
```


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## diizzy (Aug 2, 2021)

HEADS UP - users of hpt27xx, hptmv, hptnr, hptrr drivers
		

As sko noted you probably want to move avoid from the proprietary RAID especially if the card itself dies.


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