Adaptec 1405 2256000-R SATA/SAS 4 internal ports non-RAID Unified Serial HBA Card, Single

Pros: I have been using mine with Western Digital and Seagate 1TB to 2TB hard drives for about four years without issue.

Cons: Updating the BIOS can be challenging on an older card as in must be done from DOS. I would assume a new card to come with the latest BIOS revision. I tried installing a Seagate 3TB hard drive but the system only recognized 764.26 GB; however this may not be the Adaptec cards fault. A work around for this on Intel system exists, but I have not found one for an AMD system. Forums post suggest this may not be an issue with a newer (2011+) mainboards.

Other Thoughts: I am thinking about trading up to Adaptec RAID 51245.

Processor: AMD Phenon II
Mainboard: MSI k9N2 SLI Platinum
OS: Windows 7 Professional x64

Pros: SAS or SATA devices can connect to the same controller.
Simple install.
Linux sees it out of the box, with no download of a driver.
SAS beats SATA badly, think SCSI vs IDE in days gone by.

Cons: 4-lane PCIe required. do not attempt in a 1 lane slot that has a 4 lane connector.

Other Thoughts: 4 eggs, because nothing can be a perfect 5.