iStarUSA RAID-SIL3132-2ES PCIe x1 Host ControllerU SATA II (3.0Gb/s) 2 x eSATA Port Multiplier RAID Controller

Pros: Black PCB. Matched my other stuff.

Cons: Was not recognized in my PCIe 3.0 slot on my ASRock z77 extreme4-m. Was recognized the the PCIe x1 slot, but that slot was covered by my graphics card cooler. So I returned it and went with a different model.

Other Thoughts: Didn't get to really use it. Maybe it's a good card, if it works for you.

Pros: None

Cons: This card is junk. I migrated my web site database to a raid 10 configuration for this card and performance was seriously degraded if not non-functional.

The card was hard to install - all drivers and bios had to be updated to even get it functioning correctly on Windows 7x64

Spend your money on something better that does more than just FRAID.

Pros: None

Cons: The card that Newegg will ship you is not the card advertised here. Newegg is substituting a low quality generic card made by dataoptics P/N eSATA_PCIe21 for this model.
The Dataoptics card is low quality, and the card often locks up and does soft resets that freeze the PC for 1-2 minutes.

Pros: I'm on a Mac Pro tower running Mac OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard running in 64-bit mode. The card was easy to install. Mac didn't recognize the card until I installed drivers from the Silicon Image website (not iSTAR USA directly). Unlike some other inexpensive eSATA cards, this one has Port Multiplier built-in, meaning that each of the eSATA ports on the card can recognize more than one hard drive when in multi-drive enclosures. This is very important to video editors, for example, with striped drives (RAID 0) like with G-Tech drives or even those with mirrored drives (RAID 1) - array recognition is very important.

Cons: The supplied CD came with out-of-date software. I had to go to the Silicon Image website to download the latest driver versions. No biggie, but it would be nice to have the drivers on the actual card manufacturer's site instead of their chip supplier's site. The CD's drivers for Mac OS X were 10.5 (Leopard) friendly, but not 10.6 for example - meaning the drivers supplied were about 2years old.

Other Thoughts: I'll be upgrading to Mac OS X Lion soon, and will learn whether or not the drivers/card continue to work in that environment.

Pros: This is the RAID card to do the trick in my setup. iStar isn't a company I'm familiar with but the positive reviews compelled me to buy it. And I'm more than happy to have it. After years of searching for the right card, at the right price, this one allows me to connect a NexStar MX over a speedy eSATA connection (goodbye USB) and see both drives.

Only than one con (see below) setup was a breeze. I installed the card, loaded the CD and Windows found the correct driver.

Cons: The only con so far is that Windows Update couldn't install the driver and I had to use the CD in the box. Otherwise no problems at all.

Pros: Bought this product open box. The card worked great after playing with it for awhile. Excellent card for the price.

Cons: Getting software that actually would find the card from the Silicon Image website didn't go as well as I would have liked. The software included on the CD didn't work out of the box.

Other Thoughts: Using this card in a Windows 7 Professional HTPC. It is running a 5 bay Athena Storbox with 5 Samsung F4 2TB hard drives. I tried using the drivers on the CD and was having problems. Tried using the most recent drivers from Silicon Image and the software wouldn't recognize the card. Finally, I moved back to a previous version of SataRaid5 and now everything is working perfectly.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Newegg Customer:



We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused by this experience, but do rest assured that we will do all that we can to win your trust in iStarUSA brand.

The compatibility issue has been duly noted. In regards to the drivers, Yes, all the current update driver will be on the silicon image website. However, the driver in CD might be an old version driver. We will prepare the update on our website in the near future.

Warm Regards,

iStarUSAcare Service

2011



DYK: Our expert technicians and service team is standing by to answer your technical trouble shoot. Our standard office hours are Monday through Friday, 8:30AM – 5:30PM PST. Please call 1-888-989-1189 or e-mail us at tech@istarusa.com

Pros: Functional and in my experience not fussy.

Cons: None yet.

Other Thoughts: I purchased this to provide port multiplication to old hardware that I was repurposing to archive recently completed multimedia projects containing large files.

Using it with an ICY DOCK MB561US-4S-1 (also purchased from Newegg) on a WinXP system. Both products work well together with minimal configuration effort and I did not experience any issues with other eSATA adapters also installed in the system.

Pros: allows you to acess up to 10 hard drives(5 per eSATA port) when used in colaberation with other SiL equipment that support port multipling.

Small and compact
Easy to set up
allows for a variety of differnt RAID arrays including partioning multiple RAID arrays off the same set of drives.

Cons: Some times you have to reboot your computer in the BIOS splash screen if the device isnt reconized the first time by the computer(usually does this when I do a cold start up)

Only works with eSATA cables that are less then 6ft in length.

Other Thoughts: iStarUSA's tech support is remedial, I had issues at first and contacted them and got no where, later on I went to Sil.s site and read there product guid for the 3132 and come to find out my firewall program was blocking a port the Sil3132 chip needed in order to function.

Pros: I needed a card to add a Probox 4-bay drive enclosure that supported port multiplication. I bought this card based on recommendations here, and after some tinkering, everything is working great. Linux supports the card, and sees all 4 external drives.

Cons: Port multiplication does not work in Linux kernels before 2.6.30.

Other Thoughts: I had to upgrade my kernel to 2.6.34 (was previously on 2.6.24). I had to recompile the kernel to 1) support port multiplication and 2) to use the sata_sil24 drivers (sil3231 chipset support). I use Gentoo, so your level of difficulty may vary. Distros like Ubunto and CentOS shouldn't have any troubles as long as they are using recent kernels.

Also, at one point, I emailed iStarUSA tech support for help with drivers (looking for a patch for older kernels). They weren't knowledgeable with Linux, but still tried to point me in the right direction at least, which I thought was very cool.

Pros: Like others here, bought this card for eSATA PM to use with a dual Thernmaltake HD dock. Works as advertised. btw, if you have an ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 mobo, or any P6T variant, the eSATA port (as well as the 6 onboard SATA ports) DO NOT "support" PM as ASUS claims. I think what they meant is that the mobo supports a card that provides PM.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: A reasonably priced solution for PM. It will support up to 5 drives per each of its 2 eSATA ports if you feel the need to hook up 10 HD's.