Pros: I purchased this card when it first came out. I now installed 12 of these cards. with out issue. I tried others that are unreliable specially for servers,. not this one this one is the best for reliability and decent ok speeds

Cons: only cone is setting it up but considering its the most reliable card out of many I have used its worth the few extra minutes to setup . also the newer versions are terrible wish they make something this good that supports trim

Other Thoughts: I been in the computer field for decades and out of every low cost add in sata card I have tried including sata3 cards this one is by far the best. its reliability in a server is 100%. I can not say that for any other add in card aside from hardware cards costing hundreds of dollars and a few of them failed.

if you looking to just add a couple of hard drives ( not SSD ) though I have used with first generation sata2 SSD and works fine .

to just ad some drives this is the one look no further buy it

I used with security camera server constantly writing to the drive 24/7 on all the time with out issue still running 5 years now with out issue and a few workstations and servers and even some old time motherboards that there sata controllers stopped working bring a old computer bake to life . LOL

I have not used with CD-ROMs or Blu-ray though I read it works with that ..

mostly in servers to add hard drives and repairing and a few old computers that there satas controllers failed

in the past many years ago when motherboards were flaky and you if set this add in sata card up correctly it is more reliable and faster then the onboard sata controller . this is before sata3 come out

this is the only card I would trust in a server specially one that constantly writing to the hard drive

a few years ago even used in a untangle security box with out fail and many others

cant go wrong with this one buy it , just be prepared to spend a few minutes downloading the driver and firmware/bios from silicon image and set it up,. don't use the cd it comes with

Pros: Speedy delivery from Newegg. Works well for my purposes.

Cons: None at this time.

Other Thoughts: Purchased for use with ESXi 5.5 although you need to customize the ISO before installation to add in drivers that were part of previous versions. But, the card is recognized by ESXi and will suit my needs nicely for a datastore.

Pros: It's a nice card. For a SATA II controller with SOFTWARE RAID capabilities. Windows installed nicely and ran smoothly on the SATA II controller with the software RAID set to RAID 0.

I saw many complaints about the drivers on the CD. I successfully used the drivers on the CD. You need to carefully navigate the HUNDREDS of driver choices and BE SURE you're choosing the right one.

I got a '5' on the Windows Hardware Experience Ratings thingy. Not bad for a Software RAID.

Cons: Linux sees the SATA II HDDs just fine, and can install on the HDDs just fine. However, Linux cannot see the RAID. Software RAID only works on Windows. Linux cannot see the Windows install on the Software RAID, and cannot see the Windows Boot info, so Win7 won't show up on GRUB. I guess that's 'cause it's on the Software RAID.

I bought this card with every expectation that it was a SATA II RAID controller, but it is - first and foremost - a SATA II controller, and only a Software RAID (it even says "softRAID" in the driver's folder.

I found the same card almost $10.00 cheaper, on that website named after the famous river.

Other Thoughts: If you need a good quality SATA II controller, to install two SATA II HDDs on, and that's all you need, then I totally recommend this card to you. It's good quality hardware. If you need a RAID controller, and you don't mind a software RAID, and you don't need to do anything with Linux, then this card is for you. If you need a hardware RAID, then this card is not it.

I bought this card to add a RAID controller for Windows (Windows is unstable on the on-board RAID on my mobo), with the goal of creating a dual boot system with OpenSuSE and Win7. Between Win7 doing its best to keep other OS's off the PC, and Linux unable to work with the "RAID" on this card, I have been foiled. I will RMA this card and get something else.

Pros: Does exactly what its supposed to. No bells, no whistles, just plug it in and it figures out what to do. Once Windows 7 was up it decided it needed some drivers and promptly get 'em.

System (For Reference Purposes): Running at 4.5Ghz
MSI z77a-g45 motherboard
32GB Patriot Viper 3 PVI332G186C0QK Lim. Ed. Memory
i7-3770K processor
Corsair CWCH100 water cooler
(2) 256gb (AGT4-SAT3-256G) SSD RAID-0 Boot Array
(4) 1TB Hard Drives in a RAID 5 Backup Array
Nvidia Quadro FX-3500 Video
Coolermaster CM Stacker Case
All Drives are in Vanec MRK-200ST-BK hot swap bays

On this motherboard I was out of SATA ports. I threw this card in to run my DVD-ROM and a 7th SATA Drive that I use simply for Drive Images (I'm a big fan of Redundancy).

Cons: None so far

Pros: It works
Inexpensive

Cons: Documentation is cr@p. Drivers outdated. Get em from Silicon Images website.

Other Thoughts: Using it for JBOD at the moment, pass thru. Nothing anywhere said how to do it, finally figured out to set both drives as Reserved in the cards firmware at boot.

Pros: works great with correct drivers, also works with a boot drive. see other thoughts

Cons: noda

Other Thoughts: this controller card works with correct drivers. do not use the drivers on cd there old and outdated. do not use the drivers from syba website.no offence, if your to lazy to find and use the correct drivers then i suggest to buy a prebult computer. lol , shouldn't blame this hardware it woks fine


use the official drivers from silicon image and you will be happy camper

http://www.siliconimage.com/support/searchresults.aspx?pid=32&cat=3

Pros: For what it is and over 6 years old silicon image chipset it works great, no ishues

Did not have room in other thoughts ;
I been using this card in builds and fixes since it was released, was great for fixing the old nvidia motherboards with defective controlers and realy any motherboard with controler problems,it's a reliable chipset and when installed corectly performs adimeralble on par with intel reliability if not better, i tallking stability.i just wish silicon image would come out with some newer chipsets controllers for the new Sata 6. They make really good stuff ! In fact I just got back a old build from 2006 that i had installed this controller card for boot drive, he wanted to upgrade to new computer though the computer still ran fine :)

Cons: Hmm oh ok ok mite as well say it, boot up time :-/

Other Thoughts: Any one trying to use this with a SSD has no idea what there doing first this chipset is not designed for SSD, there is no trim support. The chipset is from before there where SSD available to public. If you have a old slow SSD it may work fine though pci 1.0 has its limits.

I am using this card in a x58 Xeon chipset build for a blueray,DVD,cd internel player. I have a Samsung SSD and a sandforce based SSD and for some reason windows 7 will not install to Samsung SSD with the Samsung player installed. Though works just fine if I use a diforent bluerayplayer, I believe it to be a bios ishue. Anyway I had this controller card in storage from way back 2006 and decided to give it a try. Worked great in fact as we all know DVD,blueray, or cd players do not work there best in ich mode, so this controller card fixed all ishues, now the Samsung player and SSD not only works great together but the player works trice as fast in IDE mode on this controller card with silicon image chipset :)

Pros: It works!
For windows 7 users- you will need to download the driver for a fresh install from siliconimage. Syba does not have a driver for windows 7:
http://www.siliconimage.com/support/searchresults.aspx?pid=32&cat=3

Cons: PCI-e 1x max throughput is 250MB and I was getting poor performance with this card with my 2 SSD in a raid 0. I was getting 100MB faster connecting one ssd to my onboard in a jbod configuration. The card works fine but if you want performance than look at a pci-e 2x card.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for purchasing our Syba products. The Windows 7 driver can be downloaded from this link: http://www.sybausa.com/productInfo.php?iid=536. I would like to point out that we can also issue RMA returns. We always try to provide the most reliable products to our customers and all products come with at least 1-year warranty. So please don't hesitate to contact us at support@sybausa.com for replacement or question.

Regards, Syba Customer Service KN 113011

Pros: Inexpensive, small, works.

Cons: Other than that it adds another 5 seconds to POST none really so far.

Other Thoughts: Windows 7 didn't have the drivers for this controller so make sure to tell Windows to search the Windows Update for drivers and it will download and install the correct driver. Painless and quick. I have a BD player and a DVD burner hooked up it, since I used up my 6 on-board SATA connectors for hard drives. Both optical drives function properly. I was able to play and rip movies, burn CDs without any problems. I'd buy a 4-port version if there was one. Oh, I don't know if it's bootable, but it doesn't matter to me.

Pros: Small footprint in the computer, so fits well aside larger PCI Express graphics card above it. Windows Vista located drivers automatically and installed them, and seems to be a recent SATA chip for the price. HDD access is very fast.

Cons: None.

Other Thoughts: Well worth the money if you have a motherboard with limited SATA connectors and want to add more devices. NewEgg standard shipping got this to my door in 1 day. Awesome!