Pros: Not that I can tell

Cons: Too many to tell

Other Thoughts: Don't bother with this card. Buy from somewhere else to get a port multiplier/RAID card from another manufacturer.

I RMA'ed one of these cards almost two years ago. I got a replacement card. I tested it fully, and it tested okay. I set it on my shelf to keep as a spare/replacement. Now I need a replacement. Guess what...the card now will not work. The center red light on the card blinks constantly, and it will not build a RAID of any sort. I've owned the card (starting with the one that this one replaced) for more than the 3 years originally listed as the warranty period, so no RMA for me, regardless of the fact that this card now shows a lifetime warranty on parts. And just what is the labor that carries only a 1 year warranty? I suspect it's a way for the company to get around the lifetime warranty by claiming that some labor has to be performed on the card..

I am very disappointed in the performance of this card, not its performance in a computer but its performance on the shelf waiting to be installed.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Customer,

We apologize for your dissatisfaction with the performance of this port multiplier.

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 01292015

Pros: Simple, cheap hardware RAID card with 5 SATA ports. Brilliant idea! 3 year warranty as well, which will be needed.

Cons: Not very reliable. Mine was sketchy on arrival and while I didn't lose any data, I had to pay to send the card back. We'll see how the new one fares.

Other Thoughts: It's a great product for the money, just be prepared to have to send it back sooner or later. What do you expect for $50?

Pros: -hardware raid
-S.M.A.R.T.
-raid 0, 1, 3, 5, 10, LARGE, CLONE
-software adds many features
-does not require PCI slot
-works well with multiple units in a rackmount enclosure, software manages all cards/drives.
-fast performance for SATA II
-write cache
-easy to see status LED's with software to find physical connections(click a button to find physical drive port)
-raid modes work with ANY system, even external enclosures.

Cons: -no live expansion
-software/firmware is final with no updates
-SATA II, not SATA III
-no ZFS (partial limitation with ZFS itself. ZFS doesn't work with raid cards intercepting data from drive)
-no alarm for drive failure, yet software has broken buzzer toggle
-poor documentation unless you find the website documents
-no boot environment. needs software to get full function

Other Thoughts: bought this used on EB , but was practically undamaged. I didn't expect as much functionality as was provided, based on previous reviews
After getting the software my options were significantly expanded, and I don't even have to restart the computer to do anything.
Don't expect to use this controller with SSD's. the SATA II interface for it is significantly bottlenecked. this controller is aimed for large NAS'es or media servers, with the ability to run such configs as raid-10 or raid-50 with another card.
If I had the money or need, I would love to test buying a second card and make a raid-50 with a SATA III port multiplier-based raid-0 card. would make an amazing external USB 3.0 jumbo backup box. lol I think of those kind of crazy ideas.

Pros: Hardware Raid!!! Extremely inexpensive RAID card, will connect 2-5 hard drives into a single SATA port on your motherboard. Prompt and knowledgeable tech support from the manufacturer.

Cons: None that we've seen

Other Thoughts: We purchased 2 of these cards 18 months ago for a couple of storage servers. Their purpose is to provide simple Raid 1 (mirror) for 2 boot hard drives. Their reliability and performance has been outstanding, even in using the cards for Raid 5. If your low on sata ports and your motherboard supports SATA Port Replication, you will LOVE this card. The hardware Raid 0, 1 & 5 works great. Haven't tested Raid 10 on it.

We are purchasing 3 more of these cards today for 2 new storage servers and a desktop. Will review again after the cards are installed.

Pros: Tech Support is awesome, I must say almost Cisco like. Very responsive and timely. As for the card Itself I had to RMA it due to faulty condictions. GReat that this product has a 3 year warranty!!

Cons: None

Pros: Works with AOC-SAT2-MV8 a Hercules chipset but SMART is reported only for a single drive.
Works with SYBA SIL3124 chipset and SMART is reported for all drives not just first or last one. The above two boards are PCI-X but the SIL3124 was tested in a small PCI socket with the pins sticking past the end of the socket. This puts it into 32 bit mode instead of 64 but it worked perfectly.

Cons: Need to find a place to put it as the external 4 drive tower made by Stardom does not have enough room for the PCB board and I don't want to put the board in the computer case. Difficult to mount if not using a "slot".

Other Thoughts: Be nice if it had 4 mounting holes at the corners of the pcb as I could bolt it to the top of the enclosure and put a cover on it.

Pros: What can I say? Syba did get around to getting my two cards replaced. See Other Thoughts for details.

Cons: Just the shipping. See Other Thoughts

Other Thoughts: Well, apparently Syba and I have different definitions for "return shipping." I asked if the company would be willing to pay the return shipping on defective parts. Here's the answer:

We will pay for the return shipping for the cards. However the end-user must pay for shipping the defective products to us.

I thought that was what "return shipping" meant. Oh well, I'm out some 25 bucks or so paying to return bad cards to get some others that are also bad. But this last round turned out with a surprise.

When I received the cards from the company, I saw with dismay that they were shipped via the postal service, and they came in a flimsy plastic bag with no bubble wrap or Styrofoam or any other kind of packaging whatever. When I opened the bag, I found two boxes that were severely crushed. I fully expected to open them to find two cards literally in pieces, but, long story short, they both tested out okay.

So I've upped my position to 3 eggs. But I'm really afraid that I'll be replacing these cards again in the near future, given that several have gone bad on me in the past few months.

I don't know if I can recommend this card in good faith, but then a lot of the world is like that: you pays your money, and you takes your chances.

Oh well...

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Customer,

Note that all our cards have a 3 year warranty for a new replacement.

We apologize on how the replament got delivered, but we have no control on the treatment of the product when it is sent.

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)

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.

Thank you for leaving us your valuable feedback.

Regards, SYBA CST 09272013

Pros: Unknown

Cons: Purchased 2 of these cards and right out of the box both of them failed.

Other Thoughts: If they would have work, the would have been great as they where going into a home server with 20 Hard drives.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Customer,

Please contact our support team right away for a replacement.

Note that all our cards have a 3 year warranty for a new replacement.

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 09232013

Pros: Well, when they work, they work well.

Cons: These cards apparently are not designed to work for very long. I just had two of my cards fail for no apparent reason. However, they failed at different times. I sent the first card to SYBA for a replacement, and they got it back to me within two weeks. Sadly, another card failed in the same way immediately before I got the replacement card.

Well, the replacement card also tested as bad, so I sent SYBA an email (because they say their phone lines are constantly busy) to ask for instructions on how to RMA the replacement card along with the other card. See other thoughts for details.

Other Thoughts: Here is the email I sent to SYBA:

***************************

I recently received a port multiplier card as an RMA for one of two cards which I purchased at NewEgg.com. Here are the details:

RMA No.: SY-999999-9
Part No: SY-PCI40037
Inv No: 99999999

Please note that the invoice shows that I purchased 2 of these cards, and one of those cards was the one that failed and that I returned under the above RMA number.

Now the other card has failed, so I need to RMA that one as well.

To make matters worse, the card which I received as an RMA (under the above RMA number) is also faulty. It sees one of the 5 drives connected to it as having failed. I replaced the drive with several others, and the card showed each drive as failing. Also, I have one good card, and that one sees all drives fine, so I know that the card in question is faulty.

So I now need to RMA both cards: the one which I received under the above RMA number as well as the other card that I originally purchased from NewEgg on the same invoice.

Here are my questions:

May I return both cards under one RMA number, or do I need to submit them separately (using 2 RMA numbers instead of one)?
Also, there was no invoice packed with the card which I received under the above RMA number, so do I use the original invoice number that NewEgg used when they shipped the original cards?
If not, then what should I place in the Invoice number blank on the RMA form for the card which I received under the RMA number above?

Finally, I have already paid the return shipping for one RMA, which did me no good since the card I received was faulty and now needs to be replaced. So will Syba be willing to pay the return shipping on the two cards that I now need to replace? If not then returning these cards is getting too expensive to continue. I really need two working cards because my server is down until I can get them replaced.

Please advise me about how to go about getting two replacement cards quickly and without having to pay too many return shipping charges.

Thank you

***************************

That email was sent over six days ago, and SYABA has still not responded. I guess they don't get around to reading their emails as quickly as the rest of us do. Depending on how they respond (if they ever do) then I'll get back to this post and update my opinion of the company. But at the moment, I'm getting a sinking feeling about just why their phone lines are constantly so busy.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Customer,

Please contact us again. The cause of no reply might be from an incorrect return email addess, so when we reply, the email was not sent to you.

Our main support email is support@sybausa.com

We have answered every single email customers send to us.

Note that all our cards have a 3 year manufactuerer's warranty for a new replacement.

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 leaving us your valuable feedback.

Regards, SYBA CST 08212013

Pros: As stated in my earlier post, these cards are great for SATA II (3Gbs) if you manage to get a good one.

Cons: One card failed recently. See other thoughts.

Other Thoughts: After my last post, I finally managed to get 3 good cards, and my 22 TB RAID sailed along with great speeds (My Gigabit network turned out to be a bottleneck) of about 250 MB/s.

Then only about 5 months in, my speeds started dropping to the KB/s range and then to the BYTES/s range on occasion.

Sometimes, the speed would be okay, and other times it would keep me from copying from the RAID to the backup drives. Over a couple weeks, the server connected to the raid via eSATA became unresponsive, requiring several minutes at a time to complete even a simple mouse move. I suspected the MB because it is a vintage one. I suspected a bad drive, but all showed up as good via the green lights on the front of the raid case.

So I was stymied until I observed one of the port multiplier cards constantly flashing a green light next to the connection light on the back of the card that shows out the back of the computer case. The connection light is lit when the card is plugged into a SATA port or adapter. The light that was flashing is the drive activity light and showed that the card was having trouble communicating with the drives attached to it.

I swapped the card in question with the one next to it, and the problem stayed with the card instead of with the case, so I knew it was the card.

I ordered a new card from NE, and it arrived defective. It wouldn't even recognize the drives in the case while the old, failing card would.

Now I have to RMA that one and wait for a new one to see if that one will work.

Back to that old song.

And if you need to replace a card, then I strongly suggest that you put it through all its paces if you can. I keep a spare cage with 5 spare drives in addition to the 3 I have in my RAID case, so when I get a new card, I can see if it will properly clear any existing RAID settings stored in the card (DIPs off off off on) then properly create a RAID 5 (DIPs off on off on) then leave the RAID alone after creating it (DIPs off off off off). Then I connect just that test cage to the server through eSATA to make sure the RAID controller card can see it okay. Once it passes those tests, then I get into Disk Management to see if I can activate and then format the array I just created. For good measure, I copy a few TB's to the array from backup and then copy that from the array to an empty spot in the backup.

If all works okay, then I can delete what I copied from the array to the backup, destroy the array, power down, put the test cage away and plug the card into the production array.
.

As it is, I now have my test cage sitting next to the RAID case and my server next to that, perched precariously on the edge of my small desk.

I hope the next card works out. I realize I'm asking a lot of this card, as evidenced by the procedure I outlined above, but that is precisely what this card is supposed to do, so I'll keep asking all of it that of this card and will be satisfied only once I get a good one