SYBA SY-PEX40013 PCI Express SATA RAID Controller Card

Pros: Affordable raid controller for a beginner (me). No difficulty with drivers. Has its own BIOS for setting up the array. I used two new, never-been-touched WD 320s and a Tom's Hardware article entitled "Switching Storage Controllers w/o Reinstalling Windows." Flawless, smooth experience - and I'm a novice.

Cons: The included instructions are spartan in the extreme. You must do your own homework first (see the above mentioned article) in order to have a good outcome. I was fastidious because I had the dicey ambition of moving my OS to the raid once the array was set up, and I didn't want to reinstall anything, least of all Windows XP. I also wanted to avoid driver hassles involving floppy drives or slipstreaming. In short, I got my wish.

Other Thoughts: A few simple rules are crucial. Install the card but please do not connect your hard drives. Start up, follow the "Found New Hardware" wizard. Then find "Device Manager" and verify the introduction of a raid controller called "JMicron JMB 36X". You're good now. Shut down, connect HDDs, power up, and follow directions to enter raid bios (cntrl-J). Format drives, setup array, Bob's your uncle. With my OS and all my applications residing on the raid, there is a noticeable speed increase. For fault tolerance, I have Acronis True Image make a sector-by-sector back up of my new c: drive twice per week onto a separate, third drive (safety first).

Pros: Great card for the money. 4 sata ports on a x1 pci express slot. Adaptec wants 100 dollars for their card. Works great on my WHS build.

Cons: Does not transmit temperature information. Would have been nice. Also this card was not up on their website when I checked a week ago. Seriously for a tech company this should be a necessity.

Pros: None

Cons: This card has very poor throughput. It seemed OK at first when accessing one drive, but accessing the second drive at the same time slowed access to both drives (and accessing a third drive made access to all drives connected to the card extremely slow). Also, the card I received stopped working the next day. I highly recommend having nothing to do with this product.

Other Thoughts: I researched the chips on this board, and this is a poor design. I won’t go into detail, but I now see why this card has lousy throughput. It might be OK if you only use one drive at a time and/or use only the J1 & J2 connectors. I would have done more testing if the card had continued working.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for purchasing our product. This SATA controller card has two SATA II ports on J1, J2 and two SATA I ports on J3, J4. You can connect to J1 and J2 port for higher bandwidth SATA II hard drives.

We try to provide the most reliable products to our customer and all our products come with at least 3 years warranty. Please don't hesitate to contact us at support-us@syba.com for replacement or if you have any question.

Regards,
Syba Customer Service 1005

Pros: This card's price is fairly reasonable and the size is pretty small.

Cons: This is a horrible RAID controller. The on board software has typos, the driver CD included with the card is just a dump of SYBA's website driver repository, the drivers don't work with Vista x64 (causes errors in the install), the card would cause random crashes unless an array was defined, and the documentation is horrible!

I can't find any updated drivers for this card!! I can't even find it on SYBA's webpage!!

Stay away from this card at all costs!! Pay the extra $$ and buy yourself a better card!

Other Thoughts: I hope newegg will take the card back...

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for purchasing Syba products. The problem encountered might be a driver problem. You can find the updated drivers here ftp://driver.jmicron.com.tw/jmb36x/XP_Vista_Win7/JMB36X_WinDrv_R1.17.50_WHQL.zip

We try to provide the most reliable products to our customer and all our products come with at least 3 years warranty. Please don't hesitate to contact us at support-us@syba.com for replacement or if you have any question.

Regards,
Syba Customer Service 922