Question 1

I have two PCIe slots, PCIe 3.0 x16 and PCIe 2.0 x1.  Which slot should I plug this card into?  Any advise would be appreciated.

Accepted Answer

This is a x2 card so it requires a x2 or greater slot. It will not fit in your x1 slot. It should work fine in the x16 slot. I have not tested that as I'm using it in a x2 slot. They do make x1 slot card, just not this one. Typically the x16 slot is used for a graphics card because it has more lanes and can run faster.

Question 2

Will this work with 8TB drives ?

Accepted Answer

This can be configured as a RAID controller, and the manufacturer does not mention a limit in size.  I have 4 individual 3 & 4 Tb hard drives connected and it works fine, though not as fast as advertised. I'm lucky to get 100 MB speeds, but the corporate claim was 6 Gbs from this (supposed) 2x controller. This board is also reported as being buggy with Windows OS and the manufacturer denies all problems. These little controller boards are cheap and most of them are crap, but if you aren't looking for speed and just want a quick solution, then this one might work for you.

Question 3

Has anyone tested the drivers for windows 10 x64? I see 8 and dont see 2k12 server so I would assume not.

Accepted Answer

Win 8.1 = server 2012 had been my experience since the Windows core are the same.

Win8.1 drivers usually work for Win 10 if you download the drivers.

Win 10 probably have these drivers as part of the Win 10 build, it detected the card for me in a Win 10 box.

Question 4

I have the card installed on an INTEL board and I'm running Windows 10. What does the card look like in Device Manager?

Accepted Answer

I never installed a driver for it and Windows 10 calls it "Standard SATA ACHI Controller" in device manager.

Question 5

Anyone see a potential problem with this?
SSD boot drive (SATA III)
1TB HD (SATA III)
3TB HD (SATA III)
Raid 5 handled by ICH10R on ASRock P45XE MOBO
Currently all drives are through on motherboard SATA II connectors
I'm looking to take advantage of the SATA III capability of the SSD, 1 TB, and 3TB.  On other systems I've had issues with the ad-in controller card not being allowed to manage the boot drive but on other systems I could put the boot drive on the ad-in controller with no problem.
System is WIN 10 Pro 64bit
MOBO has PCIe 2.0 x8 slot open
Any thoughts are appreciated

Accepted Answer

I used it in a system with 2  Samsung SSD drives, one of which was the boot drive.  It worked,  and Samsung Magician displayed a 6Gb/s connection for both drives, but unfortunately there was no perceptible increase in system performance.  This may have been due to the age of the motherboard (ASUS M3A78-EM).
The other concern was that Windows (8 at the time) displayed the drive type as a SCSI in disk defragmentation, not as an SSD, so I was not sure that the TRIM commands were being properly executed.  Without a noticeable performance change, I uninstalled it.

Question 6

I'm building a NAS and finding that this controller is incompatible with WDC Red NAS drives (WD30EFRX Nasware 3.0).  If you do lots of I/O - large writes - Windows thinks the drives on the other side of this controller stop responding after a while.  I see this with both Windows 7 (64-bit) and Windows Server 2012R2.  Anyone comment on their experience with this controller or controllers that work with WDC Red NAS drives?  Thanks.

Accepted Answer

I dont believe the problem lies in the card but in the drive choice. Ive used this card with countless Barracuda drives (2-tb and 4-tb, in various raid arrays) and never had an issue with the drives spinning down at inappropriate times or falling offline. There are several software options for keeping the drives from spinning down, including one from WDC itself.

Questions & Answers