SYBA SD-SATA150R PCI 2.2 SATA Controller Card

Pros: Allows old MB to use SATA drives at 1.5 speed without spending a bundle if you're trying to make a NAS or some other box that doesn't need a hot CPU.

Cons: I'm not sure if it is the card, old MB bioses, or drives but using 2TB Hitachi and 2TB Seagates in software raid1 with Freenas7 with two of these cards installed, I get frequent DMA timeout errors on the drives. non-raid setup works without a hitch. (Tried two motherboards and 4 different drives and two of these cards.)

Pros: Good price and quick shipping from Newegg. As for the manufacturer, it does what it says and hasn't wrecked my data thus far, but I haven't tried the RAID feature or booting off of it though.

Cons: A LOT of messing around with to make it work correctly as a regular SATA controller for extra storage, little to no tech support. I eventually found the answers I needed here in the NewEgg reviews. I'm using a Via Chipset MB with Athalon CPU and XP SP3. When I first installed the card it would read as a RAID controller but no drivers off the CD or any of the chipset manufacturer's (Silicon Image) or distributor's (Syba) support sites worked. I ended up getting drivers from the Microsoft Update site which wasn't easy to navigate but did work... until I powered down, plugged in the new HD & restarted. Then I had the problem of it not letting me install drivers with a HD plugged in, and I had to reinstall drivers each restart. I used the advice of Walter W. who suggested rolling back the controller's BIOS to 4.3.70 from the Silicon Image site. This worked like a charm and now it seems to be functioning normally.

Overall Review: If you're looking to just add some cheap SATA1 storage, I'd go with the Syba that has a Via Chipset. (also good for modding X-boxes) Those drivers were instantly recognized and so was the drive, with no issues. If you need RAID or need it to be bootable, save yourself the trouble of dealing with this cheap card with no support and spend a few more dollars on something better. Even though I eventually got it working, it really wasn't worth the 4+ hours I spent tracking down and trying every driver on the internet. I bought this because of the ability to boot off it, and I haven't run into any other real problems now that its working, but after dealing with the install process I'm not so sure I want to trust this card to control the hard drive that is running my operating system. Lastly, big thanks Walt and other reviewers for offering better tech support than the manufacturer and distributor combined!

Pros: It works under linux (Slackware 12.0 in my case)

Cons: It requires a fair amount of work to get it to work, at least in my case. I had a problem with the computer's BIOS wanting to attempt to boot the new drive on the SATA controller first instead of my old IDE drive which had the OS on it. If I unplugged the SATA drive during bootup and then hot-plugged it in after linux started it would work, but it would have an error if the SATA drive was plugged in during bootup.

Overall Review: Solution: Erase the SATA controller's RAID BIOS. To do this you need to download the BIOS update utility from SiliconImage http://www.siliconimage.com/docs/SiI3x12A-PC%20Serial%20ATA%20(SATA)%20BIOS%20Flash%20Utilities.zip and then using the UPDFLASH and a Window's floppy boot disk execute the UPDFLASH.exe program from the command line and instruct it to "Erase" the flash on the controller.

Pros: Cheap; works simply and cleanly in newer systems.

Cons: Completely fails in most PIII-based and older P4 systems.

Overall Review: In newer Windows XP and Linux systems (2.6 kernel) with P4 boards, I have used several of these cards with no issues. I have not fully tested speed, but I generally run software RAID configurations and have never had failures or problems in these systems. *BUT* don't plan on putting this in an older P4 board or a PIII board. This card will freeze on boot, or cause IRQ faults, and probably not work at all, as it has done this in *EVERY* PIII system, older P4 system, and even every PII system I have tried it in, regardless of drive size, etc. No BIOS option, no flash upgrade, and no switching of slots will make this card work. I have tried to set up several SATA-based Linux file servers on older hardware with this card, and I always try to pop one in, fingers crossed, to "save money" and basically make some use of the three extras I have of this card that I cannot get rid of. Don't buy this card unless you have a spankin' new P4 board and either XP or a 2.6 Linux kernel.

Pros: Cheap, works on linux, good for NAS.

Cons: A bit slow.

Overall Review: Linux 3.14 picked up the card and the 2 3TB HDDs connected to it. I use it as JBOD, not Raid. Also worked with SSD. Measured Speed - 110 MB/s in total (55 MB/s on each SATA port) with PCI Latency Timer at 128. If only one HDD is used, I get 90 MB/s. (The HDDs are 7200 RPM Toshibas which give me higher read/write on mobo SATA 3.0 ports; so they're not the bottleneck). Advertised speed - PCI maxes out at 266 MB/s (32-bit at 66 MHz) and each SATA 150 port at 192 MB/s. Even with 8/10 encoding overhead or whatever they use, I expected at least 100 MB/s on each SATA port. -1 egg for that. Also, I've only had it for 1 day - dunno about longevity. Good, inexpensive SATA PCI card. Sufficient for NAS if you don't care about speed.

Pros: Low price, up to date drivers (including Vista) in the package, SIL chipset, and installed without issue.

Cons: None I can think of at this price.

Overall Review: If you need a simple yet dependable 2 port SATA controller then look no further.

Pros: I purchased this card because of its "optional" RAID functionality, thinking someday that might come in handy, but for now I'm not using RAID. The card worked great on my pre-SATA mobo with the WD2500KS SATA drive I purchased with the card. Didn't conflict with anything. I added the new drive as additional storage (D:), not wanting to boot from it. HOWEVER... (see Other Thoughts)

Cons: User manual and driver CD didn't help with the problem I encountered. Manufacturer/website support dismal. (see Other Thoughts)

Overall Review: The problem I encountered right off the bat was that WinXP would hang (never reached screen with scrolling progress bar) if the SATA drive was plugged into the controller!! I could plug the drive in after boot up and everything would work fine! WD and Syba websites didn't help at all in figuring this out. The fix ended up being finding a v4.3.70 BIOS version on the chipset manufacturer's website (Silicon Image). After that, I loaded the 3512 SATALink driver and everything worked fine. If you're not using the RAID "option", you may well need to flash the current 4.3.73 BIOS on the card back to 4.3.70 (not included on the Driver CD) to allow WinXP to boot while the SATA drive is plugged into this card. When this is done correctly (I used WinXP Flash BIOS tab on the Properties screen while connected to SATA drive), the message this card generates during boot up displays "SATALink" instead of "SATARAID". Install the 3512 SATALink driver from the CD and you'll be good to go! Good luck!

Pros: Read the reviews carefully, I knew that but didn't. My Bad. The box says it does 64 bit, well it does in RAID only. If I ever need a SATA RAID I PCI card I'm set. ;) I stuck it in a 32 bit machine and it works fine, my mistake for not checking better so I gave it 4 stars, it does what the literature says it will. My stupidity. I now have a PCI legacy SATA card if I ever need one, no loss but be aware, sometimes all we have left is an accessible PCI slot and something like this is tempting, so read up on it first.

Cons: No 64bit non RAID

Overall Review: This can add SATA to older NT and Win2K and Linux machines