Question 1

Installed this on 2x PCIE, attached SSD and it showed up in my BIOS as bootable. The problem is it's super slow even during OS install and I noticed that the drive attached to this card is showing as IDE and no where to change to AHCI. Changing in mainboard BIOS doesn't affect it. Anyone here use this as boot and know anything about this? I've tried RAID menu with ctrl-r but it showed only RAID menu.

Accepted Answer

Check out my latest review for solution. Basically, make sure your PCIe slot is 2.0. 2x means nothing since this card is only 1x at version 2.0 which is same as 2x but with less fingers. So if you plug this into PCIe 1.0, it will only work half the speed since it only has fingers for 1x.

In BIOS, as long as you set your mobo ports to AHCI, it will inherit the setting since it's just acting as extension. You can verify that it's running in AHCI mode if you look at the raid bios screen for this card. It should say it's running in AHCI mode up at the top right. If not, something is up with your mobo. I would first install OS through motherboard, install all drivers, shutdown, install this card, install driver (w7 use the one that came with it, w8/10 use beta I listed on review) shutdown and then connect drive to this card. It should take little bit to boot but it will and work fine after that.

Can you plug in existing OS drive to this? Well, I just did that with no issue but if you are switching from IDE to AHCI for this card, there will be a problem.

Question 2

Is this card Pci express 2.0 as the ad says or is it 1.0 as some reviews say?

Accepted Answer

The booklet that comes with a recently purchased card says 2.0. I have purchased 8 to 10 of these in the last few years. They all installed easily and work fine as JBOD with Windows 7 Pro 64 bit on a variety of mother boards. I have not actually measured their speed but they seem noticeably faster than the SATA2 ports. None have failed and I am happy with them. If speed and/or RAID is critical to you, then do a lot of research and be prepared to spend a lot of money.

Question 3

Can I use this card to connect an interal DVD or BluRay drive?

Accepted Answer

I couldn't get this card to do anything but be a raid drive card. I ended up having to buy another kind. You might have better luck, since you probably have a different computer setup than I do.

Question 4

I was wondering if this particular RAID controller requires the hdds to be the exact same model to allow RAID 1? Or will I be able to have two different models and still be able to setup a RAID 1 configuration. Here are the model hdds I will be running on this controller. WD30EZRS &  WD30EZRX

Accepted Answer

Hello.   I have not used the card yet.  So, can't really reply for this card exactly.

However, from my experience with other cards, if the drives are the same size, you should be able to build the RAID.   The model numbers are so close, I would think you'd be fine.

Good luck.

Question 5

Can I use this with my main windows drive and boot from it?

Accepted Answer

I tried to use this card on my 7 year old Dell XPS420 with Windows 7 and it failed to perform and I removed it.  I.e. I could not boot from it and it had other undesirable characteristics.

Oh by the way:  I recently upgraded to Widows 10 and many of my most used program did not work.  I would NOT recommend upgrading an OLD windows 7 computer to Windows 10!!!

Question 6

I was wondering if anyone knew if this card had the feature to allow me to specify when I want the RAID 1 backup to take place. Also, if not then how often does the backup take place?

Accepted Answer

I haven't installed mine yet but I'm in IT and raid 1 isn't a scheduled backup it's called mirroring and happens immediately. When data changes it is written to both drives at the same time. If one drive fails you won't have lost any data and can replace the failed drive and "rebuild" the raid 1 array.

(I tried to include a link with a better explanation of raid 1 but it won't let me)

Question 7

How many drives will this card support?  I would like to run 10-15 drives.

Accepted Answer

This card will support 2 drives through the standard ports.  But do know this is not pci express 3.0 and will share the bandwith of PCI x1 across all drives.  So it is really not designed for more than 2 drives.

Question 8

Can I connect it using a pcie 16 x slot ? My board does not have a pcie1 slot ?

Accepted Answer

Yes, it should work fine. I have the card inserted into an X16 slot on a SuperMicro motherboard.  The first set of contacts has to be able to fit into the small slot towards the rear of the motherboard.  The second set of contacts determines how many communication lanes in the second slot are used.  Please have a look at the Wikipedia article on PCI slots, it has a good illustration of the different X1, X4 and X16 slots

Questions & Answers