Koutech PSA150 PCI SATA Controller Card

Pros: Had this card on windows 7 pita to install the drivers
windows 8 had them installed from the word go

Cons: none now

Pros: price

Cons: driver install is not for the weak

Pros: It works. Customer service with the company of this product was very helpful and very quick to answer my questions.

Cons: Wasn't as simple as plug n play. Had a lot of trouble at first getting the driver to install properly. Contacted support about my issues. Ended up being a windows error that was corrected later.

Other Thoughts: I don't have this in raid. My motherboard has 5 sata ports and 4 of them are used while the 5th one is defective. I needed one more sata port for my newest drive so I bought the cheapest solution I could get and am not regretting my purchase. It only works at SATA I speeds but on a regular mechanical hard drive you it performs just as fast as my other drives.

I have no plans to Raid yet. If I do I personally would buy a higher grade controller instead of using this. It only supports Raids 0/1. I personally would want Raid 5 when ever I feel liking moving to Raid.

Pros: It installed easy; just plugged it in, stuck in a drive and it worked.

Had it for a few months and no problems yet.

Cons: None

Pros: I Emailed Koutech before purchasing the PSA150 to be sure it is compatible with my Caviar Green 1TB hard drive and with Windows 7 64-bit, and they returned my email the following day saying that there are no known issues. By doing that they earned my business. They also recommended that I install the raid drivers whether I plan to use RAID or not. (Good to know.)They were right, the card was compatible, easy to install, and bootable. I'm not using it as a RAID controller right now, but so far it has worked without a hiccup on drivers Windows Device Manager located online. I have not yet installed the RAID drivers from the installation disk...I may not.

Cons: The driver installation instructions are a bit sparse. A setup utility, if it is on the driver disk, is not obvious.

Pros: Cheap; no software to install; on-board utility intuitive for basic RAID constellations; does the job: tested it with creating a mirrored RAID 1, then booted the freshly mirrored HDD on its own.

Cons: Black: I wish it came in purple, with a yellow racing stripe; you have to rely on software indications of drive failure: the only warning of a broken array [removed drive] is a momentary screen in the boot process that warns you of a "critical state"... for 4000 ms. An on-board alarm for a broken array would be great for those of use using this in a server and won't have that warning at boot up. Also it took approx 7.5 hrs to mirror two 1TB drives. The Set-up utility has an option for 'online' (normal boot up and copying happens in the background) or 'offline' (sit and watch the cursor spin for 7.5 hrs) copying.

Other Thoughts: At this point I would buy another one. From Newegg as well...

Pros: Very easy to use - plug and play setup. Work fine - no problems.

Cons: None.

Other Thoughts: I bought this card for an old PC I've converted to a linux home server / backup server. I used the card to add a SATA hard drive to the machine so I can store and backup data from other PC's on my network. Works great.

Pros: Small, inexpensive, compatible

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: This is a great little card based on the Silicon Image 3512 chipset.

I popped it in, told the BIOS to rescan the PCI bus and it was immediately recognized.

To get the most out of this card, it helps to go to the Silicon Image site. They offer drivers and bios updates. I started withe Win 7 x64 RAID drivers.

If you don't need RAID (like me) install the "base" (non-RAID) firmware and drivers. After installing the "base" firmware, you have the load the Windows non-RAID drivers.

You can load the latest firmware using a DOS boot disk, OR if you have it the card installed on a Windows system, through the driver in the device manager - it has a BIOS update feature that works with both RAID and "base" firmware.

This card is in used in a dual boot Ubuntu / Win 7 station. Ubuntu 9 recognized the card immediately and booted from the drive on the card and didn't need any drivers. Likewise Ubuntu 11.

Pros: It’s working on a Socket 370 Gigabyte MOBO over a year.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: This card was working on a Gigabyte socket 370 MOBO, I had Linux OS installed in the primary IDE drive and have two 1TB hard drives hanging off this card. I can watch HD movies off my WD TV live hub from this file server. I did try to install this card on an ASUS socket 370 MOBO, but it failed. I think the reason would be the BIOS upgrade. I did upgrade the BIOS on Gigabyte 370 MOBO but not in the ASUS. So if you are experience troubles with this card, chances are it would be the MOBO bios. The card was recognized by Ubuntu 9.10 and 10.04 server.

Pros: 1. 94.6/87.6 burst/average Mb/s transfer rates over 2 TB drive range, 4% CPU

Cons: 1. SMART data misreported when two HDDs attached -- one drive's data reported for both drives

2. Passes SMART ID and Data, fails to report error/self-test logs

Other Thoughts: PCI\VEN_1095&DEV_3512&SUBSYS_65121095&REV_01\4&23C0B1C&0&08F0

This implementation is clearly defective. SMART data reporting error when two HDDs attached; Query of drive 1 gets data from drive 2; drive 2 is reported correctly as drive 2. Appears to be asscociated with Silicon Image Sil 3512 SATARaid Controller implementations. SMART data passthrough only partially implemented -- ID and Data available, but not error/self-test logs (subject to design error of misreporting drives entirely).

-- Roy Zider