SYBA SD-SA2PEX-2IR PCI Express SATA II (3.0Gb/s) Controller Card

Pros: I purchased this card when it first came out. I now installed 12 of these cards. with out issue. I tried others that are unreliable specially for servers,. not this one this one is the best for reliability and decent ok speeds

Cons: only cone is setting it up but considering its the most reliable card out of many I have used its worth the few extra minutes to setup . also the newer versions are terrible wish they make something this good that supports trim

Overall Review: I been in the computer field for decades and out of every low cost add in sata card I have tried including sata3 cards this one is by far the best. its reliability in a server is 100%. I can not say that for any other add in card aside from hardware cards costing hundreds of dollars and a few of them failed. if you looking to just add a couple of hard drives ( not SSD ) though I have used with first generation sata2 SSD and works fine . to just ad some drives this is the one look no further buy it I used with security camera server constantly writing to the drive 24/7 on all the time with out issue still running 5 years now with out issue and a few workstations and servers and even some old time motherboards that there sata controllers stopped working bring a old computer bake to life . LOL I have not used with CD-ROMs or Blu-ray though I read it works with that .. mostly in servers to add hard drives and repairing and a few old computers that there satas controllers failed in the past many years ago when motherboards were flaky and you if set this add in sata card up correctly it is more reliable and faster then the onboard sata controller . this is before sata3 come out this is the only card I would trust in a server specially one that constantly writing to the hard drive a few years ago even used in a untangle security box with out fail and many others cant go wrong with this one buy it , just be prepared to spend a few minutes downloading the driver and firmware/bios from silicon image and set it up,. don't use the cd it comes with

Pros: Inexpensive, and has a relatively current SATAII chip

Cons: Very poor documentation, and the manufacturers website is even worse.

Overall Review: Others have mentioned flashing to the current SIL 3132 BIOS from Silicon Image website. This is a good thing, however, if like me your motherboard (DFI NF4) will not allow you to flash in DOS ( I booted from a DOS disk, and ran the Updflash, but the utility could not find the card for some reason), the next best thing is to do it in Windows. If you have a current Windows install, simply install the card, boot to Windows, and when prompted install the correct SIL 3132 driver. After that's completed, go to Device Manager/SCSI and RAID, then double click on the Silicon Image device. You will see a tab for BIOS flashing. Just load the newer BIOS file you downloaded fron Silicon Image, and flash it from there.

Pros: Supports SATA2

Cons: The BIOS setup is a little odd. As many others have stated you have to flash the BIOS with the correct version for the functionality you want.

Overall Review: Works great. I was able to install the drivers and flash the card with the RAID BIOS. I rebooted and moved my current drive to the card, and then added my new drive (for RAID1) and setup the new logical device. Computer booted right up, and no problems since.

Pros: Small form factor, easy to flash RAID or non-RAID BIOS from Silicon Image

Cons: Corrupts data when reading from two drives at once (!)

Overall Review: I bought this to add 2 SATA ports to my desktop. The cheap software-based PCIe --> 2x SATA cards seem to be based on SIL3132 or JMB363 chipsets (this is a SIL3132), but this was more highly rated so I went with it. My intention was to add two individual hard drives to my system, with no RAID involved. Things seemed fine at first, until I used TeraCopy, which does a CRC after file copy operations. It revealed occasional mismatches when copying files to either drive. Then I noticed MD5 hashes of files on the drives, taken sequentially, differing without any changes to the files' contents. The final straw was that reading from each of the two separate drives simultaneously would result in silent read errors, to the point where the file would be heavily corrupted but the OS didn't care. I stopped using the controller and bought a 3ware one instead, and it's been working flawlessly. I don't know if this is a problem specific to this controller or its chipset, but I would not recommend it.

Pros: Small footprint Accepts Port Multiplexer SATA II

Cons: BIOS Firmware / Driver confusion. Silicon Image / SYBA leave you guessing which BIOS to use really. Both recognize the single hard drive, and both let you partition and access it. Only the non-RAID will let you boot from the drive though. Maybe I missed some info there, but I'm usually pretty good at digging things like that up. See below for other thoughts about the flashing process. Also, I could only pick the second PCI Express slot because with the other the card wouldn't go down all the way because of a transistor sitting right there where the card slides in. But that's more of a motherboard issue, so I don't want to whale in that. It's just very apparent that mobo manufacturers don't really consider those PCI Express cards. Ah well...

Overall Review: I hooked up just one drive from Hitachi. The controller came with the SATARAID5 V7.3.13 flashed. I was not aware that I had to flash the BIOS to a non-RAID version in order for Vista to recognize the Hitachi as a valid, bootable target drive. Not that Vista didn't recognize the drive with the SATARAID BIOS / Driver combo, but it simply refused to install to it. Yet I could create partitions on the drive, just not boot from it. My computer doesn't have a FDD by design, so flashing was a BIG issue. I followed two guides I found on the web and tweaked the CD image to include UPDFLASH and the SIL3132 BIOS(es) using Ubuntu Linux on a separate PC. Now that's a hassle. Silicon Image and/or SYBA should provide such a CD Boot Image on their web site and not have their customers jump through hoops to accomplish such a mundane task. Thus, I give it a 4 out of 5.

Pros: Its cheap, uses PCI-E.

Cons: Terrible technical support. A nightmare to install properly.

Overall Review: Where to begin? Well, in order to actually use this card for what you bought it for you have to flash the bios. The driver cd is completely useless, and you have to sift through the silicon image website to find the right files. Don't install this card with a brand new setup, your going to need an OS on your hard drive to even get it to function properly. Its a tradeoff of low price for the card for bad support.

Pros: Tiny card, current SATAII tech, very inexpensive, reliable (well, for three months of constant use so far). Bought the first one when I ran out of SATA ports on a file / DB server, and it's been serving up boring but important data 24x7 with no down time.

Cons: Don't bother with Syba's website. As others have said, Silicon Image maintains current BIOS updates and drivers for the 3132 controller.

Overall Review: This is a great part for adding a couple of SATA II ports to any modern PCI-e motherboard. I expected mediocre performance, but I was nicely surprised.

Pros: Once I got Windows to detect it properly, it seems to work fine. I'm using it for extra data storage drives that used to be connected to my mobo SATA ports. Seriously, they seem just as responsive on the SYBA as they did on the mobo. $34 to get 2 more SATA ports is worth it. Would have given a 5-star rating had install been better (read below).

Cons: DIDHad no interest in RAID, but it seems they ship it with a RAID-enabled bios. So, here's what I ended up doing to get it working... 1. inserted card in PCIe slot. Connected 1 hard drive to it. 2. booted computer, and hit F4 to get into RAID setup. 3. chose "Global storage device" because I didn't want any RAID. There was some odd message like "RAID1 No". I exited the setup then booted to windows. 4. Windows still wouldn't let me install the non-RAID driver (that I got from Silicon Image web site). Device Manager still showed the yellow exclamation mark. 5. Finally got the DOS utility from SI website for the 3132. It's called UpdFlash.exe for DOS. 6. Created a DOS-bootable DVD with UpdFlash.exe on it. [Btw, who the hell still has a 3.5" drive?] 7. Booted with the DVD, got to a dos prompt, and ran UpdFlash.exe. I chose to ERASE THE BIOS option. Exited dos and rebooted. 8. XP detects it, installed non-RAID driver, now all drives appear.

Overall Review: Lame that it's shipped with the RAID bios enabled. The package says it "supports" RAID, not that you're forced into it. I ordered this, and a new 1TB drive, and got it all the next day. NewEgg rocks. May all retail electronics stores fade away (except for maybe Fry's...maybe).