SYBA SY-SA3114-4R PCI SATA I (1.5Gb/s) RAID Controller Card

Pros: same as original review. Had a very difficult time finding this obsolete unit on the syba website, but eventually was able to email them about my problem. They got back to me in 1.5 hours! They said it should see the opticals & suggested I 'reseed' the card. I almost didn't. But I did 're-seat' it and that fixed it. Fixed a mysterious extra 4 minutes in boot time that I hadn't associated w installation of this card, but I should have.

W764 Ultimate loaded some default driver and windows update found a 3114 update. Didn't have to use the CD.

Using JBOD. Did not try any RAID - not appropriate for my configuration.

Cons: the connectors don't really grab the SATA cables. No 'click', either. You should bend/shape the cables so they actively poke into the connectors and don't juggle them so they stay plugged in. Not too much of a problem for desktop, provided you don't open it up and stick your hands in very often.

Other Thoughts: I couldn't find a way to edit my original review, so I wrote this 2nd one.

As usual, it's better to back out and google mfger's name & part number than search the site w their local search function - especially for obsolete/discontinued parts.

Pros: cheap. 4-port. I don't think there is any speed advantage to SATA 3 once your file is bigger than the buffer. SATA 1 is as fast in the real world. Especially on a PCI port.

Cons: This card is hooked to 2 SATA DVD writers & 1 SATA 2 HD. It sees the HD at boot, then declares there are no devices connected. It does not see either DVD. After boot, in W7 the HD it 'saw' at boot is there and works OK. Returning as broken.

Other Thoughts: Going back to Rosewill. That card saw DVDs. It failed after 2 years, so I thot I'd try another vendor.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Customer,

This issue that you are experiencing is not common according to our feedback of this product.

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

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

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)

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

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

Regards, SYBA CST 04092013

Pros: Provides four SATA connectors. Narrow, low profile. Comes with two SATA cables. Seems reliable so far.

Cons: The directory locations of the drivers on the CD were different from the printed directions, but when located they were not recognized by Windows anyways. I used drivers from the supplier and had no problem getting them installed in XP: http://www.sybausa.com/resource/SY-SA3114-4R/SY-SA3114-4R_Windows_98SE-ME-2000-XP-Vista-Win7-Linux.zip

Other Thoughts: I installed two boards in two older IDE/SATA computers running XP, each with only two SATA connectors, to provide an added SATA data drive to replace a dead IDE data drive. Both now recognize the attached data drive, very nice. One computer was older and its on-board SATA would not recognize a 6 GB drive, even when jumpered. The SATA card is compatible with the 6 GB drive, although I kept the jumper in place and have not tried it without yet.

I crashed one computer during initial card installation, it could have been a coincidence or the fact my Windows was not up to date. My recommendation - be sure you are running the latest service pack and have recent updates. I installed the board, and let Windows recognize the hardware and install the drivers. I shut down, then attached the hard drive in each computer. There is a pause during boot up when Windows recognizes the RAID card device(s). I have not yet tried attaching two or more drives to a card, and I have not yet tried using the card with a boot drive. You might want to have the SATA cable(s) already attached as you insert into the PCI slot, since when installed the connectors are on the bottom, especially it you use the two connectors on the narrow edge that are are less accessible.

Pros: Great card. Using it in an older system that does not have SATA support. Card can be configured for RAID or 4 stand alone drives. I'm using it with 3 stand alone drives with no problems. Easy driver install with the enclosed CD.

Cons: None

Pros: Cheep and easy to install

Cons: a little difficult to setup

Other Thoughts: the person below me is running the same setup

Pros: I turned an old emachines into a server and needed extra sata connectors. I had to install the drivers from device manager as I couldnt figure out the driver disc. It installed on windows home server 2011 with zero problems. Im only using it to connect a drive for server backup so I dont know about raid, just wanted to have extra drives.

Cons: none yet

Pros: This card works great under XP. Easy to install. Just need to go to drive manager to get drives online. Customer service was Out of this world! Lots of supported systems. Silicon Image has a full page of downloads for this card. Works with vista and 7 as well according to SI's home page with drivers and firmware.
Better then a combo card I have from syba. Had troubles with write speeds but no problems on reads. That is why I got this card. Write speeds are at IDE speeds once again, around 35 for USB devices transfers, and 50-80 on drives on the same SATA card. If you need a way to get some SATA love in your machine, this is a good option to get.

Cons: Well it is PCI, so you are limited to the speed of the drives on this card. Firmware updates can be tricky. Had to use Floppy to do this. This is how I messed up my card. My floppy drive is not up to snuff anymore, and corrupted the FLASH. Newer Motherboards can boot from a USB drive, would recommend you do this to save the trouble I had. Not MAC compatible out of the box. SATA connections do not lock well, and bend easy. About the same for cards of this class. Easy fix. EMAIL support not as easy or RMA as easy as class leader LACIE, but not bad like Iomega. The techs are real Geeks. Not just script kiddies. And answer QUESTIONS. Takes a little longer to boot, but only about 14 seconds more or so. Not bad.

Other Thoughts: I did a failed firmware update, and even though I did not have my Receipt, and I bought it years ago, they fixed it for free, just had to send it in! This is a raid card that has lots of options. I got it to work without the RAID, even though it has raid firmware. I had trouble with the flash to IDE firmware. The software keeps tabs on the drives. Pretty simple but works. This is not a real raid card, but it does the job if you need it. I just hooked up some Hitachi 2TB drives and a small laptop Toshiba. PCI bottlenecks this card of course. But if you just need to add drives to a old dell 8200, this is not a bad way to go. You have to install software to use the drives in XP, It gives you status on all kinds of things for the AVG user. Overall, a very good buy.