LSI MegaRAID SATA / SAS 9260-4i 6Gb/s PCI-Express 2.0 w/ 512MB Onboard Memory RAID Controller Card, Single--Avago Technologies

Pros: it actually lets my 4x ocz vertex 30gig ssd drives run at full speed in raid0. finally...

Cons: none

Overall Review: nice to let my drives finally breathe. over a gig is their norm on this card, as they have room to move. price to performance, LSI did good here. real good. for present gen ssds, this is a sweet spot of a gem. no need to buy a $1,200 card w/2gigs cache to let them loose ;)

Pros: LSI quality components, true hardware RAID, works with Linux. Fast array build time. BIOS GUI is fairly easy to use provided mouse is hooked up. Lots of features and capabilities; this is entry-level server hardware. Includes audible alarm to indicate disk failure. Future-proofing for desired SAS drives and it supports encrypted drives. Great features for the price.

Cons: As others have said, BIOS GUI requires mouse (on my system I had to connect PS/2 adapter so BIOS would see mouse). There is a command-line version, but it's very complicated to use. The separate battery is expensive compared to some other entry-level server cards (former 3ware models, for example).

Overall Review: Setup: 2.8GHz Core-i5, 8GB RAM, Gigabyte P55 motherboard, 4 x WDC 640GB caviar black SATA drives in RAID5 w/ 128k stripe (1.745TB). Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit. Test: "fio" utility random-read of 128MB data: 76.8MB/s w/ avg. 80 microsecond latency. Performing the same random-read test on single WDC 640GB caviar blue drive using on-board SATA controller in same system gives: 0.73MB/s w/ avg. 10,000 microsecond (10 millisecond) latency - partly, if not mostly, due to CPU overhead. Bottom line: a good RAID controller such as this will provide redundancy and performance improvements over on-board controllers and/or software RAID. Battery backup unit is on-order, as battery is required (as it should be) for write cache mode, which will speed up write operations and provide additional protection in the event of power loss.

Pros: quality card and LSI was surprisingly helpful. I ordered a BBU and there really are no instructions so I needed to calirfy the purpose of the 20 pin cable (not used with my setup).

Cons: as with any component level setup you need to have some clue about what and how this stuff works. You probably want to update the firmware right away. Documentation is light so look online.

Overall Review: Of course you should download the latest drivers and stuff to avoid known issues. Make sure you know what cabling you want and order that too. And keep in mind the cables are always shorter than the real measurement.

Pros: Easy to install So far, reliable Configuration software is good Fast

Cons: BIOS configuration isn't great

Overall Review: I started with 4 identical drives, but when one was pulled, the board correctly and loudly sounded an alarm. My drive had failed. The alarm happened until cleared and each time the machine was restarted, as expected. I definitely recommend this RAID controller.

Pros: This card is working great in my Asus P6T Delux V2 mobo. It is completely compatible with the Chenbro CK23601 sas expander and properly sees 6Gbps SATA and SAS drives. I am currently running a 6x3TB RAID6 with the Hitachi 3TB green 5K3000 drives (495MBps write, 520MBps read). This card works great with those drives with none of them ever dropping out of the array. This card has a fast processor that let me do a full initialization on the above array in 26 hours. Unless they make a LSI9265-4i, this card is untouchable in it's price range.

Cons: This card does need airflow or it will overheat and drop an array. If you need to place this card in a place in your case where there is no air movement, I've found adding a 40mm fan works wonders.

Overall Review: In order to boot to the card's management gui (ctrl+H) I had to set it to the top of the boot priority in my bios. After booting to the card by bios would then knock it off the top of the list so I have to change it each time. This isn't a big deal as the windows management program lets me do everything I could possibly need to do inside of windows.

Pros: - works great with spin disks - Can force write back without bbu with parity RAID (lsi feature)

Cons: - not for SSDs! - Only 512mb cache - Runs HOT! See notes for fix

Overall Review: Card works great with HDDs. No better IOPS with the 9266 with hdds. If you want to RAID SSDs, look to the 9266 or Areca cards. You need the more powerful processor on those to keep up! As long as the 512mb of cache gets you by, this is a great card You can grab a 40mm fan, like that from noctua and with the right screws you can screw it down right to the heatsink. Brings temps down from 80-90c to 50-60

Pros: Everything works in both Linux and Windows and I didn't have to really mess with any settings after I initialized my RAID Array. The windows drivers took about 10 minutes to fix, but since this isn't a boot device for me, it wasn't a huge deal.

Cons: The read speeds on this are not what I was hoping for. It falls right in line with an mdadm software raid (RAID 5 and RAID 10 tested). It did a random consistency check the other day on my RAID 5 array and it brought the system to it's knees.

Overall Review: My cons above might sound bad, but you don't buy this card because your looking to eek out every little bit of performance out of your RAID array. You buy it for peace of mind. It's my first time comparing a hardware raid controller to a software based array using consumer level equipment, and I was really hoping for the performance jump you see on enterprise gear, but I guess that's the way of the world.

Pros: Well, after having this card for 6 months I can understand now what is all this noise abour "hardware RAID". This card is running great with 4 Hitachi's 7K3000 3Tb drives in RAID5. Very fast, reliable and most important it's great at protecting your data. RAID5 combined with "patrol read" gives me great deal of confidence (but please don;t forget about backups). It spins drives down when not in use, if there is a failure it will send an email in addition to audible alarm.

Cons: None