Question 1

Is  this a PCI adapter for a standard floppy drive cable?

Accepted Answer

No. This is a PCI-Express adapter for a SATA drives. PCI bus cards and floppy drive adapters are hard to find now. Newegg doesn't seem to have exactly what you want, but they do have a couple of external USB floppy drives, for example: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16821103402

Question 2

My motherboard has only 2 SATA 3 ports.  Can I use this to create a 4 SSD RAID array with a RAID option ROM that is on my motherboard with 2 SSDs running at SATA 3 speeds on the motherboard and 2 SSDs on this controller card at SATA 3 speeds at the same time?  I have to be able to configure and create the RAID array before creating the OS on the array.  I would think that I would need a driver installed for this controller card to work.  If not then maybe it will work.  Can you help?

Accepted Answer

To answer the first part of your question, Can you use this card to create a RAID array along with two ports that are located on your motherboard, yes. However the only type of array that you will be able to use is a software RAID array. (i.e. The creation of a Stripped array from within Windows Disk Management Utility)

The second part of your question in which you state that you require the ability to create and / or configure a RAID array prior to installing an operating system would not be possible with this card in conjunction with onboard SATA port.

To be able to create a RAID array that you can install your operating system on, you would require a motherboard that can boot from external add-in cards, and a RAID / Controller card with 4 SATA Ports. As a final Note while not required, you should look at putting such a controller card in an expansion slot with enough bandwidth to handle the peak theoretical throughput of the RAID array you are looking at creating. In this case a 4 SSD RAID array can very easily saturate a PCIe x4 1.x interface. A minimum of a PCIe x4 2.x interface would be recommended for this setup.

Question 3

Will this fit into a Gigabyte GA-880GM-D2H motherboard? I am a newbie when it comes to motherboards & PCI Express slots.

Accepted Answer

I think so.  (I regret my response is not more conclusive.  It don't have the motherboard in question, and it has been a while since I fiddled with these things.)
I googled the motherboard and it has a PCI-E 2.0 x16 interface, so you should be good to go.

Question 4

Can you put two of these in the same PC?

Accepted Answer

Yes you can but if your intention is for SSD purposes you will want to make sure you put it on an x4 or x8 pci e 2.0 (3.0) recommended slot for optimal performance.

Question 5

Will this card work with an X58 pro -e Mb and17 960 {3.2GHz} cpu and Win 10 boot drive on samsung840 evo ..Will it improve speed and keep stability?Also is it difficult to configure? Thanks  John Dobbs

Accepted Answer

I've only used this card in Server 2012 and Server 2008.  It functions in both of those environments using the same driver.

It does provide SATAIII speeds in my experiences, delivering a noticeable boost over the built-in SATAII controller in older boards such as yours.  There's really not much to configure beyond loading the driver.  Once you do that and Windows recognizes it, then it's just like any other SATA port in your machine.

I'm not sure I understand the rest of your question ... are you intending to boot from THIS card or do you want to use it in conjunction with your Windows 10 OS that boots from the onboard controller?

If it's the latter, then the only possible issue is that the included drivers won't support WIndows 10.  Perhaps some of the other reviewers have experience with this ... as I'm generally only building servers these days.  I use these cards to setup disk backup systems in said servers, and they've proven to be a good low-cost option for that purpose.  The fact that they work with Server 2012 is an encouraging sign, but not necessarily a slam dunk that you'll find success in Windows 10.

If it's the former, then I wouldn't recommend it.  You will find many cards in this low-cost space that support booting the OS from the card.  However, this can cause issues if you ever need to recover the boot partition due to unfortunate disaster.  You'd be much better off moving up in class to a true-RAID card that has all of it's boot options in onboard BIOS.  It might cost you an additional $100 or so, but the additional stability/reliability would be well worth it IMHO, if you're talking about booting an OS from an add-in card.  You can't put a price on the value of your data, ALL components are cheap by comparison.

Take these cards for what they are: a $10 solution to adding a secondary SATAIII controller ... even if your motherboard is too old to know what SATAIII is.

Question 6

Will this work on a Dell Precision T7500 motherboard?, I have tried a similar card before and it was unsuccessful.

Accepted Answer

It does not hurt to try. Mine is working fine in the following motherboards: EVGA; intel.
Just understand the installation instructions. On the Intel I had to use the non raid bios. I had to get the non raid bios from the SYBA folks.
Remember some cards are actually software raid and some are hardware raid.
If you look at the controller chip you can get the chip number, that will help finding the bios that you want.
Hope this helps.

Question 7

Does this have an ACHI device driver built in?

Accepted Answer

I made the mistake of not fully reading the instructions that came with the device. I installed the card and neglected to install the drivers with it thinking it would be recognized.

No it doesn't have any drivers built in. You have to install the drivers off of the disc that comes with the product and then install the product so it recognizes the device.

Question 8

will this card allow bootup in Win 7 ultimate 64 bit if the DVD or C hard drive is attached?

Accepted Answer

I suppose it all depends on the mobo in your system, but in my experience ithas worked every time.  I haven't bothered connecting an optical drive since it would be pointless interms of a performance boost, but it definitely works for a Windows 7 boot drive.

Question 9

Will this controller support SAMSUNG 840 EVO MZ-7TE500BW 2.5" 500GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)? I heard it has had issues with non-Intel/AMD

Accepted Answer

I don't have your specific Drive but i do sport an OCZ Vertex 4 256gb drive and it recognized it without any problems.  Also you may have to go to Syba's website to get the latest drivers for this to work with Windows 8.1 if your using that OS.  Once you get the drivers loaded you can switch to this device and any should work without a hitch.

Question 10

Will this card work with Windows 10 Pro 64-bit?  I'm using an Asus M5A97 Plus motherboard with an AMD FX6300 processor.  The Radeon R7-370 video card is covering up one of my SATA ports, so I'm looking for something that will give me another drive port for storage space.

Accepted Answer

I am currently using an MSI 970A-G46 and AMD FX 8350 and am running on Windows 10 64-bit with the new Creators update. I can confirm that this works. I have a 1tb And 3tb Western Digital HDDs hooked up to the controller am getting full sata III speeds. I didn't need to install any drivers; i.e.: plug n play.  I can't speak to your motherboard specifically but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work.

Questions & Answers