Pros: Fast, does not take up a drive bay and has no moving parts. Plug it in, add the drive in the OS. May just show up depending on the OS. And you are done. All in all. It took me about 10 min to have this in the server and being used.

Cons: Expensive

Overall Review: We use these for processes that must be done quickly and have a ton of Disk IO. You can spend 1000s of hours getting the code to run faster and or use more Ram or you can shave your IO times by magnitudes just buy using one of these. The cost becomes a no brain'r once you understand that.

Pros: Fit the case as expected.

Cons: It should come with 3 cables to connect to the MB and peripherals. It had 3 cables but 2 of them were the same as each other. So I can't complete my build. Sent email to support 6 hours ago. No response.

Overall Review: I have used these before for other builds and had no issues. If support does not get back to me today, I will likely purchase another one from @mazon(easier to return) and keep the second as a spare. Cables should not be a big deal when swapping one out. Will think twice on future builds. iStarUsa seems to have the cables already attached so there is no risk of poor quality packaging.

Pros: Just works. Put it in anything and it will work perfect. I have used dozens of these and have never had one not work. Setup of the array is easy. Bootable, fast and reliable. I have never had an issue with any bios or other card causing issues with these. The i4 version is also solid and basically the same card.

Cons: The placement of the connections is a little off putting at first. But I have not had any issues bending the cables as needed. I regularly use U2 cases and this has never caused any issues. Does however make me choose the slot closest to the side of the case to make sure if I need to add another card, that the cables are not an issue.

Overall Review: If you have never used a raid card before and need one that will be reliable and easy to setup and use, this is the one.

Pros: Price is good, Good setup and management tools once in the OS. was able to handle 8 2T drives with out issue.

Cons: Weird initial setup. Never sure if I really initialized the array. could not get it to work with XEN on a supermicro Intel server board. But working just fine in a system running Windows 2008 On an AMD desktop board. One thing to note. I tried hard and could not get it to be used as a boot drive for Windows 2008 R2. I ended up putting it in as a secondarily and added a pair of smaller drives for the OS.

Overall Review: I would not use this in anything that you are in a hurry to setup. It took me much longer than I wanted it to when setting up the first one. Give yourself some time and you should be ok. Cant really beat the price for a some what speedy Raid 5 of 8 drives.

Pros: Quality is good. Fit in the case very easy. 3 bays 5 drives. Really nice. look too. Caddies are of good quality and fit in the case nice. Number stickers supplied and there are numbers to match on the back board. This is exactly what I ordered.

Cons: None

Overall Review: If you have a case with some tabs sticking out you will have to push them in or cut them off. Not hard so not a big deal.