Before we get into the card itself, we want to take a look at the box and what you get for your dollars. The HP 1740 is aimed at the cheaper SATA-II setup for the home or server environment. The box displays the traditional colour scheme that Highpoint makes for its desktop products.
The back of the box displays a picture of the card as well as lists the features the card supports as well as some general info for users of other Highpoint products.
Documentation and software are very simple. There is a single user manual that gives installation instructions, setup instructions and basic info on the card itself. The included CD has drivers for Windows XP, XP64, Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 operating systems. The Windows boot drivers are also included so you can copy them to a floppy disk if you want to use the HP controller for your primary boot controller. On their website, there are also drivers available for Windows Vista (RC2 and above in 32-bit or 64-bit) as well as various versions of Linux and FreeBSD.
Highpoint includes 4 extremely long SATA data cables. These don’t have any of the locking tabs that we enjoy on the latest cables, which is something we would like to see Highpoint fix in the next lot of controllers they supply. A half height PCI bracket is included for use in server systems that don’t support full height PCI. Lastly there is the HP link cable that allows you to connect two cards together to expand the RAID array across a couple of controllers.
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