Rosewill RC-210 Silicon Image Internal SATA / External eSATA Low Profile Ready PCI Controller Card

Pros: Price (I paid less for this when it was on sale a year ago)

Cons: None so far

Other Thoughts: I've used this primarily for the eSATA port, but the internal SATA port has been handy for testing bad controllers on motherboards. In a perfect world, it would've had more ports on it, but for the price I paid I can't complain.

Pros: Works for connecting a SATA device to a motherboard that only has IDE.

Cons: Card doesn't work for installing a fresh copy of Windows XP. I had to install Windows on an IDE hard drive and then install the drivers for the card from the CD. Then I had to clopy the contents of the IDE hard drive to the SATA hard drive with a Linux LiveCD.

Other Thoughts: Buy this bi-directional IDE to SATA converter instead http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812186078

Pros: Works with old machines. 3tb drive support. Easy install.

Cons: Only one internal port.

Other Thoughts: I added this to a Dell Dimension 2350 with a 3tb external drive attached to the eSATA port. Upon bootup, Window 7 automatically installed the drivers and the drive was recognized. In Disk Manager, the wizard prompted for a Guid Partition Format, and a "quick format" later, all 3tb of the drive was available.

Considering the problems some folks with expensive Dell workstations have had getting 3tb drives recognized, I find this remarkable.

Pros: Instantly recognized both by my motherboard (ASUS M4A89TD) and my Linux installation.

I was able to boot off an optical drive that was plugged into it, unlike with some cards that have RAID controllers.

The price is right.

Came with a low-profile PCI shield, if you want to install this in a low profile case.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: It's old-school PCI, not PCI express.

Pros: Installed without fuss
Inexpensive and very good value

Cons: It's a basic adapter, so slower/less flexible than some ... but a lot cheaper.

Other Thoughts: I didn't bother with the driver disc and just let Windows (7x64) find its own drivers, which seem to be fine.

I would second the recommendation of others to install Hotswap! to allow removing an external drive, which worked nicely for me and was not otherwise available.

Pros: Can't beat this for 10 bucks

Cons: None

Pros: I converted my old Compaq desktop into an Ubuntu machine subsequent to a disk failure. The install, which was from a CD, went flawlessly.

Cons: None.

Other Thoughts: Good price.

Pros: Installed very easily works exactly as supposed to after determining how to access drivers.

Cons: No instructions for drivers for Windows 7.

Other Thoughts: Rosewill is making a nme for itself around here. Have other products that I bought because of price and have been surprised by how well the have held up.

Pros: Works excellent! If you need a card to run eSata, you can't go wrong with this one!

Cons: It's not free!

Pros: Works perfectly so far, running a 2T Caviar SATA disk on Kubuntu 10.10

Cons: None that aren't obvious from the specifications

Other Thoughts: Bought the RC-210 to run a 2T Western Digital Caviar Green disk on an old (M7NCD Ultra) motherboard machine, running Kubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) Linux. Plugged it in, bolted it down, plugged the 2T drive cables in, turned the power on, and booted up. There it was! 1.8T... Used GParted to create a 500G Reiserfs partition on it, chown/mod changes to allow user writes, and there we are!

Without this card the new disk was not even detected --- by GParted or any other program I tried.

The RC-210 does exactly what I hoped it would. My old machine is now, under Linux Kubuntu, running the new 2T SATA drive.