Pros: I am using this card with Fedora Core 6. The system boots from the raid and mounts the root filesystem on the raid. Using the web based card manager, I was able to add two disks to a 6-disk raid5 (5-data-disks, 1-check-disk). I added the disks and migrated the raidset to raid6 (6-data-disks, 2-check-disks). I then added all the new space to the existing volume. This all occured transparently to linux with the root file system mounted on the raid. I wanted to keep the appearance of ONE disk. Anticipating this upgrade, I chose the last disk partition for the main fileystem. Using fdisk, I simply removed and readded the last partition (deosn't change data). I rebooted and used xfs_growfs to add the new space in the partition to the xfs file system. The performance INCREASED. The average write:read went from 145MB/s:223MB/s to 215MB/s:256MB/s. This is WITHOUT using any special kernel setting

Cons: None at this point, except that I wish I had gotten the sale price.

Overall Review: There are many ways to manage increases to volume size under Linux. I could have added a new logical disk under the the raid card and then used the XFS logical voume manager to add the new logical disk to the filesystem. Had I done that, there would have been no need to reboot. The point is that contrary to other (bone-headed) comments, this card supports raid migration very well. Do keep in mind that there are many elements in a filesystem. The top layer includes the operating system which participates in the management of the file systems. Unix like systems have long supported the broadest management of filesystems.

Pros: Inuitive BIOS, supports port multipliers, is easy to install on and use in Linux (the raid logical disks look like big fast scsi disks). The Linux performance is certainly adequate. Specifically, with 6 Seagate 320GiB 7200RPM barracudas in raid5, I get 130MB/s sequential write and 260MB/s sequential read. A failed disk can be built in the background with minimal affect to system performance. But all is not good.

Cons: The card overheats. The symptom is that the raid reporting random disk failures (which is how I know about the raid5 rebuild characteristics). Attaching a fan to the heat sink corrected the problem for me (YMMV). The supplied cables are truly shoddy and not at as pictured. My set of cables had intermittent shorts that requires the cables be oriented carefully. At present, there are no after market cable replacements nor does LSI sell the cables as a separate item.

Overall Review: IMO, the excellent price Newegg offers this card for is over-shadowed by overheating failures and present lack of after market cable solutions. When buying a card with mini-SAS and other such exotic connectors, be sure that the manufacturer or the after market offers replace cables. Look carefully thought, the cables required by the present card so not use the readily available SFF-8087 36-pin format, they are apparently a variant of the SFF-8470 26-pin format which is NOT available in an internal format compatible with this card. To bad, with a fan and decent cables, this would be a great offering. Avoid this low profile until LSI fixes these problems. The high profile card has compatible software and performance and uses discrete SATA connections. However it may over heat without adequate airflow and it is at the same price range as Areca, 3Ware and Highpoint. Look at Tomas Hardware reviews and perhaps consider the Highpoint rocket raid 3220, the 3Ware 9550SX-8LP or the Areca

Pros: Pretty in white (when seen from afar) but a more appropriate color would be brown.

Cons: Vantec's bad for destroying the first hard drive. My bad for trying a second hard drive and having that one destroyed too. Both drives were killed instantly - N.B. not on account of heat but on account of incorrect voltages produced by provided PSU. Vantec has violated a basic element of trust. I can forgive a Vendor for marketing an occasional product that does not work as advertised. I can not forgive a Vendor for marketing a product that breaks other equipment. I will never, ever, ever again buy any product sporting a Vantec Logo. This deserves zero (or even negative) eggs but that is unfortunately not an option.

Overall Review: Vantec used to be OK (though not more than OK) but at this point I would say that they really need to do something about their build quality. I will long remember that they destroyed two hard drives.

Pros: It is decent card but not more than that. It is far too fat. It was easy to install and it worked immediately and has proven to be reliable but considering the price, this is not enough for it to be more than three eggs IMO.

Cons: Noisy and delivers substantial heat to the inside of the PSU. Inconvenient to install water cooling because of the sandwiched board design. In my system, I can't install more than one fat card without losing other slots that I need, Eventually when Nvidia gets their act together and releases the single board 295 equivalent for Fermi, I will give this 295 to my wife (who is now struggling with a 2GB GTX285) or to Goodwill (since she probably won't like the noise) and get a couple of single board Fermi equivalents to the 295. Better to have the coop (or a GTX480 if you do not mind waiting). Nvidia has really dropped the ball. You really need a case with extra physical graphics card supports such as are offered for some Lian Li chassis. These monster cards are a result of inadequate design (and yes that includes ATI). Both companies are doing the least they can, not the most. They could do much better.

Overall Review: The PSU requirements that many people claim for such graphics cards are plain _silly_. Even at the highest loads, the power at the input of my PSU never exceeds 550 watts, This is with an 8 disk raid doing a disk test AND burnP6 running on a 4.0GHz i7 975 AND also running a graphics test. The particular PSU is about 80% efficient which means the delivered power is about 80% of 550 or 440 watts. Most PSU's are most efficient at about 50% to 75% load. So this argues that from an average load viewpoint, a 650W supply would be more than enough. But the problem is not only the average power rating that a system uses, the instantaneous current requirements also matter. The instantaneous power that can be delivered depends largely on the MOBO design (needs sufficient number of well placed bulk capacitors). Also, every connector between the PSU and the MOBO impedes changes current flow. If logic prevailed, no one would modular PSU's but clearly, PSU's are not choosen logically

Pros: Easy to assemble, with many external interfaces and fairly quiet. Because it supports completely standard interfaces is should work well with any decent OS (I only tried Linux). It does not have a built in power supply so that means that the fan does not have to cool a built in power supply. THere is a Rosewill PC bracket that provide the power and the sata connection from the PC. So that would eliminate the need for the brick.

Cons: Not a con but I only needed eSata but got USB, two Firewire ports also.

Pros: It depends on what you want do with it. I wanted to have a way to carry a drive around to different PS's all of which had eSata ports. It is adequate for that. If you are not mechanically impaired, it is easy to install the drive. It works fine on eSata though I never tried the other ports (usb is a bit too slow for me). The unit is powered by a plain power cord which is might be useful for some applications. The unit seemed to meet spousal aesthetic requirements.

Cons: Because the power supply is self contained, the unit really needs a fan. In my particular experience with this enclosure, the fan in very short order became the noisiest part of my system. Other enclosures have quieter fans but you may need to replace/eliminate the fan if you really want a quiet system. It should be obvious that it is easy to knock such a device off the top of a PC tower which will result in considerable damage to to the drive and/or what ever it hits (cat, dog, child, etc.) on the way down.

Overall Review: If you are adding this to a PC and you value silence, you will be better off attaching your optical device without a case. This is easy, there are many external brick style power supplies and there are many PC brackets with sata or esata ports (sopme brackets allow the addition of a sata power cable). Search for "esata bracket" and you will find them in no time. That, a suitable cable and four stick-on rubber feet and you are good to go.