Rosewill RC-219 Silicon Image PCI Express eSata x2 NCQ non-RAID SATA II Controller Card

Pros: Great little card that does exactly what it says it does. Installed it on a windows 8 with no issues at all and i also have another one on a Windows 7 with no issues at all. As expected have three times the transfer rates to two external Hard Drives. Awesome card.

Cons: None

Pros: Great little card that does exactly what I need it to. Installed it and then installed Win 8 and plugged my two externals in and got great speed through e-SATA with no further action. I'd expect the same in Win 7.

Cons: None

Pros: This is a real gem! I've got 3 of these cards now; they're cheap, reliable, and compatible with everything I've thrown at them: Docks, port-multipliers, RAID enclosures, DVD/Lightscribe burners, 3TB drives, 12TB arrays.
Performance is very good for the price, even during heavy multi-drive use.

Plug-and-play in Ubuntu and Windows XP/Vista/7/8 -- only time I needed drivers for this card was using it as the system/boot drive for a Windows XP install.

Uses the widely-supported SiI 3132 chip. Forget the outdated Rosewill website -- you can download current firmware/drivers/utils directly from Silicon Image.

Low-profile bracket is a nice plus, works well in Dell SFF cases. The card itself is very small; I've got one next to a bulky video card, and it doesn't block the fan.

Cons: Only two ports.

Other Thoughts: On one machine, I've got 14 drives (3 RAID enclosures, 1 HDD dock, 1 DVD burner) connected through a SINGLE port on this card, through an Addonics AD5ESAPM-E external port-multiplier.

Pros: I have purchased several of these RC-219 cards to connect to external eSata hard drives. Simply put, they work like a charm in both OSX 10.6.8 and Windows 7 Pro 64-bit. I have connected single and multi-bay external enclosures to the RC-219. Never had a single connection issue with my hardware. You simply can't beat the price/performance ration here - excellent reliability, again.

These cards are capped at 3GB/sec read/write. I typically get read speeds anywhere between 85MB/sec and 105MB/sec to my external drives.

Cons: None.

Pros: simple way to add eSATA ports

Cons: The ports can be touchy. I bought two of these cards, and can't use a port on one because it tends to disconnect the drive at random. All the rest are fine though

Pros: Installed this in a Redhat linux server to add more external hard drive storage, and it works great. Getting MUCH faster speeds than I was with the older internal hard drives.

Cons: Not many. The instructions for installing the linux drivers could have been more helpful, and the installation process itself didn't give a clear indication of a successful install, but the device worked after the first attempt!

Pros: It is cheap and it just works. I installed it in my 5-year old Dell vostro 200 running WinXP. I booted up the PC and it detected the card immediately. Then it asked for driver which I downloaded from the web. That's it. I particularly like the hot swappable feature and SATA multiplexing. This works perfectly with the Mediasonic HF2-SU2S2 which requires SATA multiplexing.

Cons: None

Pros: It works

Cons: It doesnt't 'not' work

Other Thoughts: To "NA" the person complaining about not reaching 300Mb/s. Please lower your tech level to 0, because you obviously know absolutely nothing about computers. You are using a Western Digital GREEN drive that spins at 5400RPM. The speeds you are getting are a limitation of the HARDDRIVE, not the Sata Port. 70MB/s is blazing fast speed for a 5400rpm drive. You are much more likely to get 30-40MB/s with that HDD. In order to reach 300MB/s speeds you would need a Solid State Drive (SSD). Please do some research before you post a nonsensical review about something you have zero knowledge of next time.

Pros: Don't know, never got it to work - the card is small though. Great customer service from Newegg.

Cons: Ordered one of these cards because it's on the list of reccomended cards for the Drobo S - got it, installed it in PCIe slot 1, not seen in BIOS or Windows. Sigh... Newegg kindly sent me a new one without requiring the old one be sent back - great customer service there! - but the new one does the same thing - slot 1, not seen, slot 7 (which I know is good because I use my PCIe wifi card in it), not seen, tried it in my 2nd PCIe x16 slot and the PC won't boot, just beeps

Other Thoughts: If anyone from Rosewill reads this, has this card been tested on an Intel D77BH-55K motherboard? I suspect the problem is the mobo, and if it's not then there may be a bad batch of these RC-219 cards because I got two in a row that don't work are aren't even recognized in BIOS. I'll try a different brand of ESATA card and see, but I suspect the results may be the same - they all appear to use the same chipset. My Rosewill PCIe wifi card works great in the same PCIe slot I tested this card in, so I know it's not that.

Pros: It's cheap, comes with a low profile bracket, and can be configured for RAID or not. It was recognized by my Red Hat Linux system without any configuration.

Cons: The LED pins could use some better marking.

Other Thoughts: You can go on Silicon Image's website and download a different BIOS for if you want RAID or not. It comes with the latest RAID BIOS installed but that caused 1 hard drive per eSATA port to not be recognized (I am using port multipliers so drives 2-4 would show up but not drive 1). A simple flash of the "base" BIOS remedied the issue.