Rosewill RC-201 PCI SATA Silicon Image, RAID 0/1, Normal and Low Profile Host Controller Card

Pros: PCI connection for older computers.
Cheap.
Works well.

Cons: Would be unusable if it needed to be half-height, which is a feature the product advertises.

Other Thoughts: The SATA connectors are on the top edge of the card, so if you try to use it as a half-height card, there would be little to no room for attaching the cables. I suppose if you have right-angle connectors, it'd work, but may be tight.

Installed and worked nicely on a Windows Home Server box of mine.

Pros: Been using in a server for over a year - no problems, haven't had to think about it since installing it.

Cons: My ancient motherboard won't let me boot from the drive connected to this, but i get to use a terabyte drive in a system i first built in 2003 or so. For less than twenty bucks. Worth it.

Pros: I just got it and installed it, but was easy and cheap upgrade for an old computer i have running server.

Cons: Installation manual isn't updated for the Flash trick (although if you have 2 disk drives like i do, you don't need the trick).

I'm lowering a star due to no information on the website how to set it up using 1 disk or optical drive.

Other Thoughts: I was all ready to flash the card and do the little tricks. I had SATA onboard the motherboard but it's almost 10 years old and the sata doesn't seem to work well (copying alot of files seems to make the drive disappear).
Well i got this and plugged one of my disks in to see if it would work, but it didn't see it. I plugged in the other one getting ready to flash the card and after botting up Windows 2003 server, it saw both drives. No RAID setup, I already formatted them NTFS and the system saw it.

So if you only have 1 drive or optical drive you may need to flash it but if you have 2 drives of different sizes no need to flash it.

Although i would think they would add a FAQ or note on their website in how to setup this card.

Pros: Inexpensive
Easy install
Works great
Gives expected SATA-1 throughput
Comes with half-height bracket

Cons: Doesn't do the dishes

Other Thoughts: Installed these in a couple of old Dell GX260 systems which use half-height cases and have no SATA or PCI-E ports. Running XP Pro. I put some cheap 32GB SSD's into these systems and hooked them up with these cards and breathed new life into these old systems. Made a huge difference.

If you're going to boot through these cards as I do, you have kind of a chicken and egg problem on install. You need the driver installed before you can boot, but you have to boot to install the driver. The solution is to boot through a motherboard port first (with the card installed), install the driver, then move the drive over to this card (or clone to a drive connected to this card in my case).

There's no point paying for SATA-2 capability if you have no PCI-E. The max throughput for a standard 32-bit/33Mhz PCI bus as found on virtually all desktop PC's is only 133MB/S, which is about the same as a SATA-1 port after it's overhead. So the PCI bus will bottleneck you to SATA-1 throughput anyway.

Pros: Works but not as bootable primary controller right out of the box. All ok if you just want to have a raid0/1 with a couple drives.

Cons: If you want to boot from non-raid SATA you have to work to get there, thanks to The Merg and others for tips on getting this thing to work.

Other Thoughts: Tried the jumper thing and it did not help me much... so,
1.- Install the card and install the Silicon Graphics drivers, this gives you an option in the Device Manager properties FlashBIOS tab to also update bios.
2.- Install the bios from Silicon Graphics and the FlashBIOS tab will go away.
3.- Install the drivers from Rosewill, new drivers on their site (not sure why the Silicon Graphics drivers do not work after the bios upgrade, must be the non-raid thing) and now you are getting closer.
4.- Boot to Acronis CD and ghost the old ATA drive into your new SATA
Remove the data tape from the old SATA and in the system bios set the new drive as primary boot devise.

Crazy but it does work, cheap solution to add SATA to old computer. Next time will just pay more for a card with greater options build in right out of the box.

Total time wasted back and forth to get this thing running 3-4 hours!!

Pros: Adds two SATA ports to a PC that needs more SATA ports. Inexpensive add-on card with the reliability I've come to expect from a Rosewill product.

Cons: The ports are SATA I (150 Mbps), but beggars can't be choosy. Using a non-RAID capacity was a little trying to set up. There are no instructions provided in order to get it set up that way.

Other Thoughts: While the device is advertised as being able to be used in a non-RAID capacity, it was quite difficult to get it set up that way. Here is some info on how to get it set up that way:

1. Install the driver that comes with the card (which will be the SATARAID driver).
2. You need to download the BASE BIOS from Silicon Image for the 3512 chipset.
2. Under Device Manager, select the device and go to properties.
3. There should be a FlashBIOS tab. On that tab, select the BIOS file that you downloaded and flash it.
4. Download the newest Base Driver from Silicon Image for the 3512 chipset.
5. Update the driver for the device. Select that you Have Disk and go to the directory where you downloaded the driver. Install the driver.
6. Reboot the PC.
7. You should now have an add-on card that will see devices, such as optical drives, in a non-RAID capacity.

Pros: Cheap

Works

Cons: None?

Other Thoughts: I bought three of these in February of 2010, to install in some Dell workstations that I had re-purposed as light duty servers, old enough that they didn't have SATA ports.

Running Ubuntu Linux, they were recognized instantly and worked with pretty much no setup required. A year and a half alter, all three are still ticking.

Pros: Works just great, brought a 2 year old motherboard with a non-working SATA/IDE controller(yes, ASUS) back to life for under 10$. Only needed one sata drive so the potential bottleneck of using a PCI based controller was no concern.

Cons: None, machine boots slower with the card in place but thats generally to be expected with a storage controller of this type.

Other Thoughts: Slipstreamed the drivers with nLite to avoid having to provide the controller drivers via floppy disk or emulated floppy during XP install.

Pros: Cheep. Really cheep.

Cons: USELESS for low profile use. It includes the low profile bracket, but because of the placement of the SATA connectors, you can't actually attach a cable to them and be able to close the cover on many low profile chassis. Woops. Somewhat of a fatal flaw.

Other Thoughts: I'd return it, but it's not worth the hassle given the purchase price.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,
Try using a 90 degree SATA cable. That should be short enough for you to close the cover on your case. If you are still having issues after that, please contact the Rosewill support team either via phone at 800-575-9885 or via email at techsupport@rosewill.com.
Thanks,
Rosewill Customer Care

Pros: Firstly, I'll say I didn't purchase this product - BUT - my friend did. I work in IT so he asked me to set it up. This controller recognized his single 1TB SATA HDD (JBOD I assume picked up automatically?) with zero problems. I didn't touch the jumpers at all.

Cons: He made me waste 2 days trying to correct his mistake. LOL.

Other Thoughts: Cool - a half decent cheap sata card that fits anyone's budget.