areca ARC-1210 PCI-Express x8 SATA II (3.0Gb/s) Controller Card

Comments: This card screams. It just clobbers the built in RAID controllers and most plug in cards. I have a 1600 GB RAID 5 array. (1200 usable). I get between 180 - 200 MB/s sustained read throughput for most of the array. Lowest is 137 MB/s. I get about 70 MB/s average write speed. Be carefull about the motherboard you buy. I used a dual PCI Express 16 motherboard from ASUS. They don't expect you to put anything other than a video card in the second slot. Only recognizes the card about 75% of the time. 3 finger solute fixes the problem but it is annoying. I also had to flag the bios as Dual video cards in order for it to even turn on the 2nd slot.

Pros: Easy physical install, very clear and thorough manual, easy-to-navigate manufacturer website for BIOS and FW updates. Web BIOS and FW updates work fine (see other thoughts below). Comes with 4 SATA cables, each having one right angle connector. Nice! Comes with heatsink fan installed with optional passive HS in box.

Cons: None.

Overall Review: Some issues that have nothing to do with this card but that initially frustrated my install: First, the card fits into my second video PCI slot. No mobo issues with that aside from my eventually figuring out that I had to edit the mobo BIOS to place the controller in last place for boot order (it was in first place by default after installation). Danged if I couldn't figure out why I kept failing to boot into Windows. Duh! Second, the archttp utility works perfectly on Vista 64 Ultimate. BIOS updating with the utility worked flawlessly only WHEN I USED IE Explorer. Didn't work with Google Chrome at all. Word to the wise.

Pros: I bought this card for several reasons: 1) it's a hardware RAID controller with on-board memory, 2) it's fully SATA II compliant, 3) it's fully PCI-E 8x compliant, 3) it supports arrays larger than 2TB, 4) it supports email alerts when drives fail. So far it has done all of these very well (the drive fail test can be faked via a 'test event' in the RAID BIOS).

Cons: None so far.

Overall Review: I needed a hardware RAID card to put into a Dell Precision 380 desktop that would support arrays larger than 2TB. I wanted a PCI-E card for the improved performance over a regular PCI card. After doing some research and discovering the on-board Intel RAID manager wouldn't do it, I went on a hunt for an add-in card. This card came up and I searched around and found pretty good feedback on it. It DOES support arrays larger than 2TB, in RAID 0/1/5/6, which is excellent. I also found out that arrays larger than 2TB require a 64-bit OS as 32-bit OSes don't support LBA64, which allows for >2TB arrays. This is an eye-opener for me also. I now have the card running in Windows Server 2008 x64 with a 3TB array in RAID5 and so far it's been smooth sailing. Management is via web browser and can be done from anywhere on the network - also a handy feature. Overall I'm very happy with this card so far.

Pros: Great performance for the price.

Cons: They supply drivers called StorPort which they claim are better than the WHQL SCSIport drivers. Go with the WHQL SCSIport drivers, I initially used the storport ones and got endless BSOD boot loop one I went up to W2K3 Server SP1.

Overall Review: The previous reviewer went on about RAM on DIMMS. This card is the 4-port version which has no DIMM slots but has 128 Meg of onboard RAM. The beeps are a function of how many times the card is sent a reset on boot, mine beeps twice. It works fine in the Tyan GT20 with the S2865 motherboard although you'll need new longer SATA cables. The SATA connector slots on the card nearest the circuit board are the odd-numbered ports - important if, like me, you are relying on the drive position to know when drive 'x' fails.

Pros: Easy to configure. Fast raid-5 speeds. Lots of options for configuring cache, stripe sizes, etc.

Cons: Pricey, but worth it. Wish it supported replacement of the cache memory with a bigger DIMM like the others in it's series.

Overall Review: 4x640GB WD Caviar Blues in a Raid-5 (atto): 4k Writes: 193MBps 4k Reads: 201MBps Sequential Writes: 310MBps Sequential Reads: 315MBps

Pros: This card definatly takes the toll. It supports up to 4 SATA II drives with very little CPU utilization. This card is extremely fast!!!

Cons: Loud beep during bootup, initialization and BIOS post combined is about 15 seconds, card is a little pricey.

Overall Review: According to HDTUNE I had an average read of 120 mbs with 3 velocirators on my 790I Ultra onboard RAID 0. With this card I now get 260 mbs average read with a burst of 360mbs.

Pros: Superfast! Easy to configure! Great tech support! Great RMA service! Easy install. Nice web interface for configuring your raid card in windows, it will even allow you to upgrade the firmware. I updated it with Vista Home Premium x64 without a hitch on a fresh install. I highly recommend using floppy/usb firmware upgrade as vista has too many programs running that may interfere and cause the flash to fail.

Cons: No toll-free tech support. poor drive identifier. (I have 4 of the same drives and when 1 fails it's impossible to tell which one as they only use the drive model # for a drive name) When it first came out this series was to use the new raid 6, but this one doesn't. in theory it should support it as it needs only 2 extra drives for fail safe which still leaves 2 drives for raid. I heard you can flash one of the other raid card's bios to this one and get raid 6. But I decided to not try as it would slow down my transfer speeds. Drivers not well supported. I kept losing my raid constantly lately after I rma my controller after I damaged it. I just found out through some googling that this thing has issues with Vista drivers unless you use the StorPort driver. I was using the scsi driver as storport isn't compatible with XP and I just recently switched to Vista last x-mas. I've been running 100% for over two months now with the Storport drivers!

Overall Review: Make sure to use StorPort drivers for Vista or you'll lose raid. I've hit over 300mb/s on my four 150GB Raptors in raid 0! I now have 4 Seagate 250GB with the Perpendicular technology and I hit around 250gb/s in raid 5. I might be able to get higher on this board, but I have a P45 chipset and it slows down my second PCIe port, so I'm not sure if this card is running 100%. But all-in-all this card is awesome!

Pros: Blazingly fast. Works with Vista64 (and 32, I think), but you must download the drivers from the website. EASY to use, and to set up. You won't regret purchase.

Cons: Slightly expensive, but you get what you pay for.

Overall Review: No reason not to own one of these, since storage is so cheap, but single drives are SLOW! 250MB/sec average, 570MB/s burst on 4x250gb RAID 5 seagate 7200.10 all purchased from the egg.