Customer Reviews Of SYBA SY-PEX40008 PCI Express SATA II Controller Card

Customer Reviews

Syba
SY-PEX40008
Controllers / RAID Cards

Customer Reviews for SYBA SY-PEX40008 PCI Express SATA II Controller Card - Retail
Newegg.com's Product Ratings and Reviews feature enables Newegg.com customers to help each other make informed buying decisions.

Review Summary (16 Reviews):
Excellent	5ReviewsExcellent	32%
Good	4ReviewsGood	25%
Average	1ReviewsAverage	6%
Poor	1ReviewsPoor	6%
Very Poor	5ReviewsVery Poor	31%
Excellent	0Reviews	0%
Good	0Reviews	0%
Average	0Reviews	0%
Poor	0Reviews	0%
Very Poor	0Reviews	0%
Excellent	2ReviewsExcellent	17%
Good	4ReviewsGood	33%
Average	0Reviews	0%
Poor	1ReviewsPoor	8%
Very Poor	5ReviewsVery Poor	42%

Reviewer	Product Review
Techie Tech Level: high Ownership: 1 week to 1 month This user purchased this item from Newegg	1/26/2010 6:39:07 AM Don't buy this card Pros: It sure looks good and looks like it should work. Cons: Even though they say this is Windows 7 compliant, my system can never find it no matter how many hardware searches that I do. A complete waste of money and time. There is NO WAY that I can see on how to install the drivers. Any ideas anybody? Other Thoughts: This is the second add-on card that I've gotten from NewEgg that were supposed to work on a high-end Windows 7 system, but they DO NOT. Be very careful about trying to install these into a system because they just might not work. Did you find this review helpful? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
N/A Tech Level: high Ownership: 1 day to 1 week	1/10/2010 3:10:12 PM preventing bootup Pros: cheap Cons: apparently incompatible with my motherboard Other Thoughts: i am having similar issues getting my system to bootup into Windows 7 with the card installed. I saw the solution with setting the PCIE Max Payload to 128 or 256, however, i do not have that setting in my motherboard bios. not that i would want to lower my max payload for all my PCI Express devices anyway, but it is frustrating that i do not have the option. Did you find this review helpful? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
N/A Tech Level: high Ownership: 1 month to 1 year This user purchased this item from Newegg	1/5/2010 3:12:14 AM Bad card. Pros: None. Cons: Having a similar issue as a previous reviewer where the card sits at BIOS searching for the drives and never finds them, regardless of the drive configuration, BIOS settings, slot, etc. It only says "No valid devices". Cannot even get Windows to boot (from a RAID 0 array on the built-in mobo controller) when drives are connected to the card. Tried flashing to older and newer versions of BIOS, with same results. Other Thoughts: Going to be contacting tech support about this issue, but the headache I've had to deal with troubleshooting this is unbelievable. It should not be this difficult to setup a RAID array, let alone get the controller to even detect the drives attached to it. Did you find this review helpful? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
adamf663 Tech Level: high Ownership: 1 day to 1 week This user purchased this item from Newegg	11/23/2009 8:36:16 PM defective design or card Pros: might work well with two hard drives Cons: with one hard drive or just optical drives, has a 5 minutes hang while looking for a raid array. others have reported it. syba doesn't ack it my crashes when optical drive is accessed kernel panic stating that there's a hardware problem if there's a disk in optical drive duringbootup Other Thoughts: don't know if card or design was defective. others reported 4-5 minute hang during bootup 0 out of 2 people found this review helpful. Did you? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
jturn Tech Level: high Ownership: less than 1 day This user purchased this item from Newegg	10/23/2009 8:19:59 PM Simple setup Pros: This is the first RAID I've set up, and this card makes it real easy. Running a RAID5 array with 3 x 1TB Seagate drives. BIOS went right into RAID setup after posting. The Win64 drivers are working flawlessly with Windows 7 Ultimate. No issues whatsoever, was up and running within 10 minutes. Cons: -1 egg for slow read/write speeds, although I expected subpar speeds since it's a software-based controller Other Thoughts: Cheap card that works if you're looking for a simple RAID setup and aren't that concerned about performance Did you find this review helpful? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
N/A Tech Level: somewhat high Ownership: 1 month to 1 year This user purchased this item from Newegg	10/21/2009 8:04:08 PM Great value expansion Pros: - Cheap 4x SATA II expansion - Provides use for PCI slot - Works great Cons: - Installing the drivers looked ambiguous prior to reading other reviews (see other thoughts). - Card did not seat flush with the back of the case (see below). Other Thoughts: I've been using this card to expand SATA II connectivity in my network server. 80 MB/s transfer speeds through gigabit network (have not tested local transfer speeds but appears to be legit to product specs). All four ports work well. Low cost was important, especially since I didn't care about any RAID functions. The box had a mini CD with different driver folders on it, both labeled differently from the model number on the box. I don't recall which I installed (see other reviews) but they work just fine on Vista x64. On my card if you try and align the backplate of the card with the case, the card does not seat properly and is not recognized. The backplate angle is off a few degrees when the card is seated correctly, but this is minor to me. If I somehow needed another 4x SATA II ports, I wouldn't hesitate to get another one of these cards. 3 out of 3 people found this review helpful. Did you? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
magnawave Tech Level: high Ownership: 1 day to 1 week This user purchased this item from Newegg	10/19/2009 9:16:36 PM Works well with Linux/mdadm Pros: Worked with Linux easily, unlike some other SATA cards with the SIL3xxx chipsets, this one was able to be reflashed (via FreeDOS) with the non-RAID BIOS(from Silicon Image website) so it would work fully as a plain SATA controller. Card fits properly, connectors are solid, inits/boots fast, and works well. Cons: Gets a bit hot, CD included is rather useless but that's kinda par for the course nowadays. 1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Adam Tech Level: high Ownership: 1 week to 1 month This user purchased this item from Newegg	10/16/2009 9:35:11 PM Linux look elsewhere Pros: Posted bios immediately. Installed fine in Vista and 7, both Ultimate x64. No problems creating RAID5 array with 3 WD Green 1TB drives. Been running fine for two weeks now. Emailed support, and received response after 6pm on a Friday. Cons: Not supported in Fedora, anything above Core 2. Plenty of Suse support, but that's about it. 1 egg off for that. Slow write speeds. I know this isn't a true RAID card, but it's still a con. Other Thoughts: Other than that I like it. Works fine in windows. Customer support seems good, just wish the chip were more broadly supported. Did you find this review helpful? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
N/A Tech Level: high Ownership: 1 day to 1 week This user purchased this item from Newegg	10/14/2009 4:11:24 PM My Bad Pros: Simple RAID set up, RAID or non-RAID option, seems to work with Windows and Linux Cons: Manual and support options could be better. I may have found my answer sooner. Other Thoughts: Regarding my previous post about the card not working in Windows 7 or Vista... I found the "PCIE max payload size" option in my mobo BIOS and after setting it down to 256 the card worked just fine. My apologies to Syba. 2 out of 2 people found this review helpful. Did you? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
N/A Tech Level: high Ownership: 1 day to 1 week This user purchased this item from Newegg	10/12/2009 7:42:13 PM Horrible Pros: None Cons: Came with BIOS 6.3.18, flashed to 6.4.09. Tried Vista and Win7, and neither systm was able to initalize disks. The O.S. locked every time, and that was if it was lucky enough to boot. Tried both RAID and base BIOS. Other Thoughts: What else can you say? I could not get it to work. Maybe it's the mobo, but everything else works including the onboard SATA. Only gave an egg because you have to give at least one! Manufacturer Response:Dear Customer, Thank you for purchasing our products. If your computer locks up during start up, please go into your computer BIOS to configure the 'PnP/PCI Configuration" setting. If you have that setting, please select "PCI Express relative items" and set maximum Payload Size to 128 or 256. We try to provide the most reliable products to our customer and all our products come with at least 3 years warranty. Please don't hesitate to contact us at support-us@syba.com for replacement or if you have any question. Regards, Syba Customer Service 1015 1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Tom Tech Level: high Ownership: 1 day to 1 week This user purchased this item from Newegg	9/5/2009 5:53:33 AM Mixed bag Pros: Performance seems good, Solaris supports this chipset. Cons: Every boot, it sits there at the SiI 3124 BIOS trying to find my drives and never finds them. This take probably literally 4-5 minutes to pass, which is extremely annoying. This card uses the SiI 3124 chipset, and Silicon Image makes available two BIOS images -- one for RAID, one for JBOD. The card ships with the RAID BIOS installed. I flashed it with the latest JBOD BIOS (since I'm using ZFS), and it did not help. It still sits there a good 5 minutes before saying "No valid devices" and letting my machine finally start booting. The drives show up just fine in the OS, though. Other Thoughts: I've also flashed the motherboard to the latest, and confirmed that the disks are at the latest (Samsung F1 7200rpm 1TB 32MB). Since there's four drives and four SATA cables involved, unless it's a particular compatibility issue with that model of drive, it's not the drive's fault. I've exhausted possible BIOS settings to try to use to solve this. Once it finally boots, like I said, the drives are there, they work, and they're fast. I'd buy a different card if I could do it over, though. I probably will anyway. Manufacturer Response:Dear Customer, Thank you for purchasing our products. Under your BIOS settings you might be able to find an option to enable Option ROM. You may also try the card on a different slot to avoid conflicts. All of our products come with at least 3 years warranty. Please don't hesitate to contact us at support-us@syba.com if you have any problem or question. Regards, Syba Customer Service 911 1 out of 2 people found this review helpful. Did you? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Dan Tech Level: high Ownership: 1 week to 1 month This user purchased this item from Newegg	8/25/2009 6:47:09 AM 4 ports, pci-e 1x slot? sign me up! Pros: 4 SATAII ports in a pci-e 1x card. it's what i've been waiting for. supports direct drive access (JBOD) even if it doesn't say so. you can just skip configuring the drives in the card BIOS. well supported and mature chipset, with bios updates and drivers if you need them (but you probably won't). Cons: gets quite hot under load. it does have a heatsink on the controller chip but it's worth making sure you have consistent airflow directly over the card. Other Thoughts: this was exactly what i needed to build my second soft RAID 5 array. I use Sabayon linux (based on Gentoo) with a 64-bit kernel 2.6.29. The card and all drives were detected without issue, and it took about 10 seconds to set up the new array. performance is what you'd expect from an MDADM software array, which is to say it's totally acceptable for my home use but not Super Wicked Awesome. it easily keeps up with file transfers across the gigabit network. 3 out of 3 people found this review helpful. Did you? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Go3Team Tech Level: somewhat high Ownership: 1 day to 1 week This user purchased this item from Newegg	8/9/2009 6:27:52 AM A little hesitant to buy at first.... Pros: Very fast considering it's 1x. 60 MB/sec transfer from onboard SATA 1.5 connection to the drive on the controller card. Cons: Only came with 2 cables, when it has 4 connectors. Other Thoughts: Worked right out of the box on Ubuntu 9.04. I only have 1 drive hooked up to the card, a WD Black 1TB. I will most likely buy another to try the RAID functions of it. 5 out of 6 people found this review helpful. Did you? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
y4 Tech Level: average Ownership: 1 day to 1 week This user purchased this item from Newegg	8/6/2009 9:29:26 AM Research, research, research Pros: has 4 SATA ports. Cons: not recognized by end user Linux flavors like Fedora. yet detection is spotty with CentOS. software RAID is pointless since you can do software RAID via OS without a special RAID controller. Other Thoughts: Research before you buy. Do you really need this card if your mobo already has RAID and plenty of SATA ports? Because this card is only SOFTWARE RAID. You don't need this card or any soft RAID controller because you can create RAID with a bunch of disks via Linux without any special RAID controllers. In short, really learn the difference between real hardware RAID and fake RAID like this card. OTOH, if your mobo doesn't have enough SATA ports and you want to add SATA drives, this may be the way to go. Manufacturer Response:Dear Customer, Thank you for purchasing our products. This is a software RAID card for Windows and Linux. You can use this card for RAID, or storage controller for hard drives and optical drives. All of our products come with at least 3 years warranty. Please don't hesitate to contact us at support-us@syba.com if you have any problem or question. Regards, Syba Customer Service 824 3 out of 7 people found this review helpful. Did you? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Fogl Tech Level: high Ownership: 1 week to 1 month This user purchased this item from Newegg	8/5/2009 7:41:20 AM Great for unix world. Pros: Finally nice and cheap PCI-E card with at least 4 sata ports. Well supported SIL3124 chipset. Recognized in Centos and OpenSolaris. Cons: It is no cons, just a fact. This is soft RAID card. Do not expect good performance from BIOS based RAID5 (0,1 and 10 might work well, didn't try). You can not boot from this card, if you do not create any logical volume (see other thoughts). Other Thoughts: This card is internally PCI-X card with PCI-E bridge. It is very similar to SY-PCX40009. This card supports JBOD even if there is not information about it. Even with default RAID BIOS, you can just hook up your drives and ignore card's BIOS all together. It will report error, that no logical volume has been found, you can not boot from drives, but drives will work (in JBOD mode) and OS will see them. If you want to boot from this controller, you have to use RAID BIOS and create some volume (even one drive concatenation volume), but this will alter content of your drive. I have to say I found SYBA support very responsive and helpful. 6 out of 6 people found this review helpful. Did you? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
N/A Tech Level: high Ownership: less than 1 day This user purchased this item from Newegg	7/29/2009 12:25:46 PM Simple no-hassle card Pros: Hooked this card up two four SATA II 600gig drives, plugged it into the PCIe 1x slot and off we went. F4 to enter the on-card RAID utilities, configure all four drives for RAID-10 and life is good. An excellent card for the price. Cons: None yet but the rig has only been up for a few hours. 4 out of 4 people found this review helpful. Did you? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!