SYBA SD-SA2PEX-1E1I PCI Express SATA II (3.0Gb/s) Controller Card

Pros: None

Cons: Not working

Other Thoughts: Bought this to add an external eSATA and internal SATA to my new Lenovo win 8 Box with Intel Z75 chipset- it was not seen by BIOS or WIN 8 in either of the 2 PCIE slots. Moved it to my old Win 7 Quad core desktop. Win 7 found it and installed drivers, says it is working correctly, but will not connect to any SATA device I try. Gave up-, not worth sending back.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Customer,

You are very close to using this product properly. The last step is to initailize the Disks you connected using Disk Management utility. contact our Support team to walk you through the installation process at support@sybausa.com.

Our technical support team is available to help 9am-5pm M-F. Feel free to contact us during those business hours.

Making affordable quality products is our goal. Our engineers will look into this matter. If it is a problem of our production design, we will improve it.

We are more than happy to provide all of our customers with a prompt exchange whenever a product becomes defective.

SYBA offers an online RMA form, the user can easily fill out the form and submit it for a quick RMA return and exchange. It is SYBA's policy to answer all customer inquiries within 24 hours (M-F)

Thank you for purchasing one of our products, and for leaving us your valuable feedback.

Regards, SYBA CST 05082013

Pros: This is exactly what I needed, just 1 e-sata and 1 internal sata, I am running a Western Digital Black e-sata 1tb drive, and a internal sata bluray burner from the card, all in Windows XP Pro....Installed the drivers from the disc, on restart both drives are recognzied. I get over 100/meg sec on the hard drive, and bluray burner all burn fine without issue. Really a cheap great investment.

Cons: none

Other Thoughts: For me does NOT lock up on Windows XP Pro, like some others have said, I have had zero issues with it for months now. For the money it can't be beat.

Pros: Easy to install, works as boot device, replaced my broken onboard SATA controller

Cons: none

Other Thoughts: Beware that it has only 1 internal SATA port, but if that's good enough for you, this is a very nice little card for a good price. The manual says you need Windows installed but you can even install Windows 7 (I did 64 bit) with this card as the only controller. You have to load the driver during install, the included disc contains the latest Windows 7 drivers. There is a pitfall though, after you tell Windows the partition etc it says "cant install on this HD", but you have to replace the driver disc with the Windows disc at this point and click the partition again and it installs.
This card saved me a new MB & Processor

Pros: Picked this up from the Egg to drive an DVD and free up an extra SATA on a Gigabyte880GM-D2H with 4 SATA connectors.
Popped it in, pointed W7 to the driver CD, rebooted with the DVD now plugged to the card and success! 1 SSD and 3 HD's in an cneaper mATX.
Not a hickup, works great with full throughput. A note for that MoBo, the SATA card is very short and does not impede airflow to the NB heatsink, a big plus. In an age where we owe China about a zillion $ in never to be paid debt, getting a non QC'd cheap card that works is cool. Well worth the couple of bucks it cost.

Cons: I can't find fault with this little card, I ran it in a loop overnight. If it fails, which I doubt, I'll update the review.

Other Thoughts: I will probably get another to put in my 'Junk Box' for temp use in setups, it's cheap enough.

Pros: used with trayless hotswap bay this thing works great for hotswapping our backup drives just pop one out pop new disk in no reboot or anything, works awesome

Cons: none

Pros: Great for secondary drives

Cons: Can't install Windows 7 or XP when this is the only adapter. Not recognized.

Other Thoughts: The SATA controller on my Intel motherboard(the 3rd Intel board out of the four I built 4 years ago) is going bad. Bought this thinking I could use it as the primary controller. Doesn't work. Can only use as secondary controller because Windows 7 and XP won't recognize this adapter during installation.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Customer,

We are sorry to hear that one of our products did not perform as you intended it to. In order to use this card as the primary controller, you must connect it to a working system and install Windows on it. Once Windows is installed, it can be booted from. If you are ever in need of assistance, do not hesitate to contact us.

Thank you again for purchasing our product. Our business depends on your satisfaction. Please do not hesitate to contact us at support@sybaUSA.com for our warranty service or further questions.

Regards, Syba Customer Service GR 04272012

Pros: it works with an old HP XW6200

Cons: It doesn't supports hot swap in Windows. Devices do not appear under the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon

Other Thoughts: I bought this card because I needed the "hot swap" functionality. The description mentioned "Hot plug of external SATA devices supported." and that's NOT true. I kind feel like I was robbed.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear customer,

I may assure you you where not robbed. Be sure to check if the card and all of its devices are installed properly. Feel free to contact us.

Our technical support team is available to help 9am-5pm M-F. Feel free to contact us during those business hours at support@sybausa.com

Thank you for purchasing one of our products, and for leaving us your valuable feedback. We value all positive and negative feedback.

We are more than happy to provide all of our customers with a prompt exchange whenever a product becomes defective.

SYBA offers an on-line RMA form, the user can easily fill out the form and submit it for a quick RMA return and exchange. It is SYBA's policy to answer all customer inquiries within 24 hours (M-F)

Regards, SYBA CST 12212012

Pros: I use it for with a Sans Digital external enclosure with 3 out of five bays occupied. The port multiplier works fine, I'm running a 3 disk software raid5 array through Debian Linux. It recognized the drives right off, and the driver for it was already in the stock kernel. Performance was as expected.

Cons: SATA II (not III)
Only one eSata port.

Neither mattered to me, I think there are more expensive versions that address both of those issues.

Other Thoughts: I got a RocketRaid card that was bundled with the enclosure that was a total piece of junk. I wrestled with it for quite awhile before I gave up and got this card.

I looked at what was used in the BackBlaze pod and got a card with the same chip (Sil3132).

Pros: Easy install and setup

Cons: None so far. It's doing everything I need so far. For some reason, I'm under the impression that you can only use one socket at a time. I thought I read that somewhere before. I've been thinking about an eSata hard drive dock. I need to check and see if the external port works while the other one is in use.

Other Thoughts: I bought this as an extra internal port for a Blu-ray drive, so I haven't used it with any Raid function nor for hard drives. But it's working fine for the Blu-Ray drive and that's all I needed. I was already using all 8 of the sata sockets on my board.

Pros: Easy install, small size, works good so far.

Cons: No serious cons.

Other Thoughts: i find it annoying when these marketing people claim a Transfer Rate Up to 3Gb/s' when it has a 2.5Gb/s single lane connection. Why do they do that?