Rosewill RC-216 PCI Express eSATA II x 2 / ATA 133 x1 RAID 0/1/0+1/JBOD mode Controller Card

Pros: gave me the ide port I needed for my z68ftw mb. Driver cd worked and on reboot my ide hard disk was ready. I have more sata ports then I need right now, but the extra 2 might come in handy down the road. Came with good an ide cable and a one sata cable, alone worth $14

Cons: would have been nice to have another ide port, but I have enough slots to throw another in if needed.ide cable was short...but I have a thor case(e-atx-giant size)

Overall Review: moving from legacy 98 and xp systems have been made eaiser by inexpensive sata cards in pci and pcie format. A scsi card in ide costs more than my mb!

Pros: Inexpensive way to add 2 external (or internal) SATA drives and if required an additional 2 ATA drives. I use 2 x eSATA on a new DELL Alien PC and the installation was flawless using only the CD which came wiht the card - Windows 7 found the drivers and everything works flawlessly. I have used several Rosewill products and they never disappoint. Nor does Newegg. Here in California I get the parts usually the following day via UPS! Cant beat that.

Cons: None.

Overall Review: Would like to see this card with 4 x eSATA.

Pros: -Price (a fair price to get a couple extra SATA ports and a IDE port) -It Works (on my 200GB IDE HDD/250GB SATA HDD/Liteon iHAS-324B SATA Burner) -Speeds (it's basically on par with on-board SATA as i was doing transfers between my IDE 200GB drive and a 250GB SATA drive (both are connected to the controller card) at speeds that you would expect for drives of that size. also files transfer fine between my motherboard connected SATA drives and the controller card drives) note: i am using this device in a 'ASUS P8H61-M LX Plus Rev3.0' (using BIOS 4001 (April 27th 2012)) motherboard. you install the card, boot into windows, install the drivers, reboot and then everything works.

Cons: -None overall (although before drivers are installed Windows 7 takes quite a bit more time to load with the card installed. but once you get the drivers installed boot up times return to normal) -----Other Thoughts:----- i am using Windows 7 64bit Home Premium... i am using the newest drivers from Jmicron's official website which are... "JMB36X_WinDrv_R1.17.63_WHQL.zip" (Driver release notes say May 26th 2011) the card came with v1.07.00 Firmware. the newest on JMicron's official website is 1.07.24 even though in their release notes they list 1.07.28 as the newest but 1.07.28 is not available for download on the official Jmicron website. Website notes on the BIOS updates... 1.07.24 - Fixed failing to create new RAID (HDD gray in GUI) 1.07.28 - Fix HDD detection failure under AHCI and RAID mode files needed for the process explained below: "RomUpdateTool_1.19.zip" & "jmb363_1.07.24.zip" (which you can get from official JMicron website)

Overall Review: Here is how to create a bootable USB drive to flash firmware... 1.Format USB device in FAT32 Format from Windows (like usual) 2.Use Windows Version of "UNetbootin" and select FreeDOS for Distribution. Type: USB Drive. Drive: *your USB drive*. Click OK. (then it will make your USB drive bootable which don't take long) 3.Copy Jmicrons BIOS files (i.e. 36xupd.exe/dos4gw.exe/jmb363_1.07.24.bin (rename that bin to "update.bin")) to root of USB Drive. 4.Boot to USB Drive (then hit enter on initial load screen that has 'default' listed) 5.Select 5 and press enter 6. "A:\" prompt shows up 7.type "C:" (without ") hit enter 8. type "36xupd /r backup.bin" (without the ") hit enter (current BIOS on card goes to USB drive as the name backup.bin) 9. type "36xupd /w update.bin" (without the ") hit enter (i am assuming you renamed the firmware file (i.e. jmb363_1.07.24.bin) to update.bin before putting on USB to flash it) side note: i used a 128MB flash drive for this pr

Pros: Popped this card into my ECS Elitegroup 690GM-M2 AMD motherboard (not a great MB, but it was free from a friend) and plugged in my new 2TB SATA hard drive and turned on the computer. A second post screen came up after the normal motherboard post screen indicating that the card was recognized and that the 2TB hard drive was connected. Once I formatted the new hard drive, I was good to go! *You still need to install the RC-216 drivers on the CD after you boot up the first time if you want the computer to recognize everything after the subsequent reboots, though.* At least in Win7 x64 Pro (what I'm running).

Cons: PLEASE NOTE: While this card has 4 SATA ports (2 internal, 2 external), you can only use TWO AT A TIME. You select which two you want to use by changing jumpers on the board (by default, the two internal ports are selected from the factory). To be fair, now that I re-read Newegg's description, this IS listed at the bottom. It's easy to miss, though. Nothing bad to say about Rosewill or Newegg, just wanted to reiterate this point since I missed it the first time.

Overall Review: Did not yet test this card in XP or Ubuntu Linux. Oh, it also has ATA 133 in case you want to add an old Parallel ATA CD/DVD drive or HDD. But, come on... new SATA CD/DVD burners are only like $20.

Pros: This is an inexpensive option to add some eSATA (or internal SATA) ports and an additional internal PATA header to your PC. It is not a high performance RAID card, but anyone would be foolish to expect that for the price range. While some folks have experienced some frustration with Rosewill support, I actually had a good experience with them. It did take a great deal of persistence and a fairly high level of tech knowledge, but in the end I was able to accomplish what several others here have been unable to do. I'll explain more in the other thoughts section. I've been able to run the board under Windows XP 32-bit and Vista Ultimate 64-bit with the most current available drivers. Rosewill finally provided me an updated flash utility that was compatible with version of the board.

Cons: There were some issues with using the RAID features of this adapter and some issues with using DVD burner attached to it. If you can get the most current version of firmware flashed to this board, it should correct these issues. This board uses the JMicron JMB363 chipset, and updated firmware and flash utilities can be found on Rosewill's and JMicron's websites. The problem was that the BIOS on my board was not compatible with the available flash utility. This is what eventually was corrected. These are not Cons, but I ran out of room to add this in the Other Thoughts section. Error Messages and their possible causes: 'source file NOT exist!' -- May have used a long file name 'JMicron JM36x Controller NOT Found!' -- May mean you ran utility from within Windows 'No Supported Flash Found' -- Have a version of board not supported by the version of flash utility you have

Overall Review: Check your board to see if you have version EN29LV040A. There will be an IC chip on the board that has this written on it. If you have this version, the flash utility currently posted on Rosewill's and JMicron's websites will not work. There is a new version that they have provided to me that does work. I'm sure they will be posting it on their sites soon, but if you needed now, just email Rosewill's support. Hear are some other things to note when flashing your adapter. It will NOT work from within Windows. You must boot to DOS using a bootable floppy, CD/DVD, or USB flash drive. Also, ALL file names must be in 8.3 format as long files names are not recognized by the utility. The update BIN file provided uses a long name, so you must rename it to something shorter. Since I'm out of space in this section, I'll put some common error messages and their possible causes in the 'Cons' section.

Pros: - transfer speeds on WD Black 1TB 32MB cache SATA II and Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB 32MB cache SATA II, both in external enclosures connected to the card via eSATA cables range from 100MB/sec (reading) to 140MB/sec (burst reading). I haven't tested write speeds as the test would erase contents of my drives. Tested under Windows Server 2008 Enterprise 64-bit with Intel Q6600 o/c to 3.06GHz with Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro and 8GB GSKILL DDR2 800 memory o/c to 1032MHz. - speed tests from an old laptop using another Rosewill product, PCMCIA card with SATA II connectors, gives comparable results, despite the fact that the laptop is 4+ year old Dell Inspiron 9100 with Prescott P4 3.2GHz and 2GB of DDR333 RAM. Beats the pants out of the internal IDE 2.5" drive (reading 60MB/sec) or external USB 2.0 connection for the same SATA II drives mentioned above (30-33MB/sec reading). - you can use 3 cards if your motherboard has 3 PCI Express x1 slots. Just get the right drivers from Rosewill site.

Cons: - IDE connector supports only 1 device. You cannot connect 2 IDE devices, none of them will be recognized. A bummer. - configuring for internal SATA/external SATA usage with 8 jumpers using confusing instructions from the manual. Once you get that right, the card will work just fine. - it does add additional 15-30 seconds per each card to booting time, even if you simply want to enter the motherboard's BIOS. - if I didn't need IDE port, I'd go for RC-217 (4 x SATA II) if it cost 2 times the RC-216, not 3 times. - entry-level card for prosumers, don't expect professional monitoring software or features included with hard-core RAID controllers from ARECA, 3WARE or other manufacturers (different target market). It's not really a con, just unavoidable trade-off, but one worth the price. I've been using them only for JBOD, never RAID. For hardware RAID-5/6 with 4x SATA II or 8x-12x I'd go with ARECA/3WARE/Adaptec.

Overall Review: I've been using 2 of these cards in my 2 Windows Server 2008 64-bit machines for many months now, and They should give you the speed of motherboard-integrated SATA II, whether you use the card's SATA connectors, or external eSATA connectors, verified. The cards support at least up to 1TB drives, not sure about 1.5TB (haven't tested), using only. Drivers are rock stable, never blue-screened on me. Despite some inconveniences (messing with 8 jumpers to configure 2 connectors as internal or external), the card is one of the best value items on NewEgg. If you own a laptop, RC-605 PCMCIA with dual SATA II is another great value; jaw-dropping performance on ancient laptop (if a lot of time you use VMs running from external SATA II drives, owners of newest laptops using the same VMs from external USB 2.0 drives will hate you and wonder why everything takes them 2-3 times slower than on your VMs). Just remember to get the right drivers, they are easy to confuse with ones for a different model.

Pros: When I upgraded my MB, I lost the use of 2 IDE HD's, because of change to SATA connectors. Now I have the ATA 133 HD's back & running fast. There are 2 eSATA & 2 internal SATA ports, but you can only use 2 of the 4 SATA type ports. I'm using both internal, but you can use1 internal & 1 external or both external. You always have the ATA 133. Good setup manual, lots of pictures showing all the various combinations. Good transfer rates when moving data from drives on card to those built onto the MB.

Cons: Only 2 of the 4 SATA ports can be used at a time.

Overall Review: It's a fairly compact card, so it doesn't reduce cooling air flow much. I used 5.25 to 3.5" adapters to make use of 2 empty 5.25" bays. I also replaced my ZIP 100 with a HD. I'll probably buy a spare and/or for one of my other computers. I don't have any eSATA devices yet to check the other ports.

Pros: Fairly good for the raid/basic sata adapter for the 1xPCI express ports. I have the EVGA SLI board (which I love) but i just need 2 more sata connections. This care was a good fit due to restrictions inside the case from 8800 gtx's. Plug and play in Vista.

Cons: It's only 2 ports total active(i.e. any combo of internal or external parts). The manual was wrong on how to set the jumpers. Spent 15 minutes uninstalling and reinstalling the card. You must set the jumpers yourself to turn on the external ports. By default it ships with internal connectors on only. BTW the manual was wrong on how to set the jumpers.

Overall Review: I would have given it 4 eggs if the manual had been less sloppy.