StarTech 4 Port SATA II PCI Express x4 Card Model PEXSATA24E

Pros: Great card if your wanting to add 4 SATA ports, Supports SATA II up to 300GBs, supports raid 1 and 0...

Cons: For the price this card is going for and it does not support optical drives... pathetic... i got this card strictly to add 4 DVD/BR to my system and it took my to call tech support at Startech.com to tell me that this card does not support optical drives... WOW

also it does have support for RAID 1 & 0, but like i said before for the price of this card... you would think it would support 5 & 10...

i would have kept this card if it supported 5 &10 and moved all my HDs to this card and put my optical drives on the mother broad, but it does not -_-

Other Thoughts: IF YOU ARE PLANNING ON ADDING OPTICAL DRIVES USING THIS CARD turn away! i am freeing up my PCI slot and getting this card... Item#: N82E16815280003

Pros: I liked the idea of six ports on the card but you can only turn 4 of them on theoretically.

Cons: I have a new ASUS M4A89GTD Pro/USB3 MB adn AMD 6 core running Windows 7 64 bit. The card driver installed but non of the ports would work no matter the configuration of the jumpers. Device manager showed it installed properly but multiple working drives would not be recognized on any of the ports supplied. I purchased a Masscool at a quarter of the price and it works flawlessly. There techsupport just told me the same thing that the instructions say. It would not work with the jumpers configured in any possition.

Other Thoughts: I cannot recommend this card to anyone with similar hardware setup.

Pros: This card is the bomb!!! Toss it in your motherboards PCIe x16, x8, or x4 slot, and you are good to go (granted your motherboard can auto-detect appropriate PCIe bandwidth requirements &/or manual settings). Drivers work on all OS x86/x64 (XP, Vista, Windows 7, Server 08/R2 = No problems!)

Ive tested mine on high quality Biostar boards such as the 890FXE, TPower N750, and TA770. Of course, if you are using some dodgy mobo like Asus, Gigabyte, or MSI (you know, the bottom of the barrel brands) I can not guarantee that it will work correctly due to the lack of manufacturing quality.

Cons: FOOL below thinking that this is a RAID card? Does it say RAID in the title? No it doesn't. This is a SATA controller plain and simple. This card functions exactly as it should, listing 4 independent drives within the boundaries of your OS default configuration pertaining to new drives.

If you want RAID, you can set up RAID from within windows, or get a dedicated RAID controller card. Either works.

Other Thoughts: I currently have this card attached to a AMS DS-3141SSBK backplane, and wooo @ hot-swappable drives w/this card and Server 08 R2.

Sustained write speeds from all 4 drives at once, to a single dedicated internal drive (connected to mobo), or any random internal drive, reach speeds up to 50-80mbs (w/SATA II drives). Talk about performance! I cant' emphasize how great this card is!

Would love to see a SATA III version!

No need for a manual, or instructions. If you can't get this card to work, you need to find something else to do besides using a computer.

Pros: Worked for backup drives for a while

Cons: Then it died.

Other Thoughts: For $129 it needs to work and not die..nothing else to say...will be sending it back to newegg.

Pros: Only works with eSATA card reader and external HDD cradle with my configuration.

Cons: 1. Long story short, this card will not work with DVD (ATAPI) devices. I thought other reviewers were off the mark and I could get my DVD burner to work with the card. Wrong! So, after a month of investigation:

2. Asus online chat support was unhelpful. Asus Forum support was much more helpful (thanks John).

3. StarTech support was polite and helpful (thanks Kirk) and ultimately explained the UNMENTIONED facts that this card (A) doesn't support ATAPI devices, (B) can't be BIOS-flash-updated to support ATAPI devices, (C) and doesn't support user-configurable BIOS options to disable the RAID controller to obtain a SATA-only controller.

4. With my H/W configuration the only functionality this card gives is use of the card reader and the Thermaltake external disk cradle.

Other Thoughts: StarTech should provide FULL product specifications on their website.

Could not get the card to work as desired with my following configuration:
* Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
* ASUS P5E3 PRO LGA775 mobo
* CORSAIR XMS3 2GB (4 x 2GB) DDR3
* SAPPHIRE Vapor-X Radeon HD 4890
* Thermaltake W0131RU 850W P/S
* 2 Intel X25-E 64GB SSD's in H/W RAID0
* 2 Western Digital 250GB HDD in H/W RAID0
* 1 Western Digital 2TB
* 2 LiteOn iHAS424-08A DVD/CD (only 1 recognized by Windows7 - read review)
* 1 Thermaltake BlacX ST0005U external HDD sATA docking station
* StarTech 4 Port SATA II PCI-E x4 Card, Model PEXSATA24E
* SYBA PCI-E x1 1394B/A Firewire Card, Model SD-PEX30009
* Nippon Labs Internal All-In-One Card Reader/Writer, model ICR-BB

Pros: Don't know, never got it to work

Cons: Does not work with Windows Server 2008 -any version.

Pros: 4 Ports which is great when adding multiple HDDs for media storage and backup. Not really a con but just to clarify to those reading this: there are 4 internal and 2 external ports, but, as advertised, only 4 total ports work depending how you set jumpers thereby disabling 2 ports.

Cons: Sloooowww performance! After noticeably slow file transfers from one HDD to another, I benchmarked using a popular HDD program and found that the chipset controller on my mobo easily permitted 35-38Mbps data rate while this Startech PCIx4 card posted disappointingly slow data transfer rates of only 12-14Mbps. I even bought a 2nd card of the same model to double-check with same slow outcome. I have the card mounted to an x16 slot (and tried all available slots with same results; further, my bios is indeed up to date). Called Startech and they were no help. Returned card to NewEgg since the card did not achieve advertised SATA II performance.

Pros: works as it should - 4 more internal ports - no problems at all

Cons: bad docs...

Other Thoughts: Love NE but they don't stock it and the price is high - so I got for $115 at Dell instead.

Pros: It does exactly what it says. I have a Gig GA-EX38-DS4 (from Newegg, of course) and ran out of SATA ports; used one for a Blu, one for a DVD, the Gig needs two ports for its e-SATA, a system drive, 3 data... you get my point. This allowed me to use one of its ports for an external and still gain 3 more. Copied about 200Gb in under an hour.

Cons: Documentation is weak, to say the least. Optical drives would NOT work with it, although external backup and internal data drives all hummed along fine. When it does its boot diags, only lists one drive (although works with all 3 I have attached -- so my advice would be not to panic if you see that).

Other Thoughts: I found a place that was clearing out its last one for a song, so didn't get it here (sorry, Newegg; you're awesome) and was very concerned, since StarTech isn't exactly a household name in this kind of an application -- plus, there were NO reviews to be found (and believe me, I looked). I did NOT run full speed tests to verify that I'm getting full SATA II throuput; I use the drives attached for data and backup. That being said, after 2 months of use, no issues other than the failure to function with the optical drives. Smooth, no hiccups, and the speed appears to be fine. As I said: it does what it says, at a reasonable price.