Computer system from a single PCI card to conserve the number of available expansion slots
Setup a RAID 1 mirror for data redundancy/duplication or RAID 0 stripe for increased performance with up to 4 SATA drives
Backed by a StarTech.com lifetime warranty and free lifetime technical support
4 internal SATA ports
Support for JBOD and RAID modes: 0 (stripping), 1 (mirror), 0+1 (strip/mirror)
Add 4 SATA ports to a full or low profile/small form factor (SFF)
Hot-Spare and Hot-Plugging support
Large capacity drive support with 48-bit Logical Block Addressing (LBA)
Supports first-party DMA commands for Native Command Queuing
This review is from: StarTech.com 4 Port PCI SATA RAID Controller Adapter Card PCISATA4R1Greetings. This is a technically-sophisticated product in both understanding it and its setup. That is why I believe it's received some bad raps: Many people just don't really understand what it's doing and how to do it. In fact, I had to ask a lot of pre-sales questions (after reading the online PDF manuals, which frankly I believe could use a rewrite, which I've offered to do); however, "Kirk Anger" at CSDTech@Startech.com truly came through for me and was very patient with both my pre-sale and post-sale questions (I'm talking 13 emails to him), until he got me understanding it and making it actually happen. So, it's not really for the novice nor the faint of heart, but for the "savvy" and experienced user, it is a very recommendable system -- and it gives you RAID capability whether your computer has it, or not. It can perform simple "mirroring" of your main [C:/Drive usually] to a 2nd equal or larger drive using RAID 0 (Striping), or RAID 1 (Mirroring), or the RAID 0+1 (Mirrored Sriping), or even the RAID 5 (Distributed Parity RAID) and JBOD ("Just a Bunch of Disks") -- and you can use up to 4 harddrives for your configurations -- and it can enhance speed, data integrity, or both. However, what Startech highlights in their ads is what I wanted it for: The RAID 1+S ("spare drive"). This is a feature wherein you actually (with the card and its included software) create a RAID 1 (mirrored) set, which requires 2 drives. But then you go a step further: Using a 3rd drive (again of equal or greater size), you create the actual "spare drive" option. What do these 3 drives set up in this manner do for you? It "Adds seamless disaster recovery to a RAID 1 configuration." What does that mean? If your main C:Drive fails (for whatever reason, soft or mechanical), not only do you have the "mirrored" RAID 1 2nd drive's data -- but if you're main drive crashes, and you have it set up as the RAID 1+S (and their GUI software loaded), the "spare" or 3rd drive will literally boot up your computer as if nothing has happened. I finally tired of all the backup schemes and software -- and Startech's blurb got the best of me -- and I am very pleased with this setup. You won't "see" the other two drives in things like Microsoft Explorer (except through Startech's software). Also, you won't be able to utilize those other two drives to get triple your harddrive space. However, you will get safety -- and with the 3rd or "spare drive" -- your machine should boot up as if you'd had no failure at all. Statistically, it is pretty low (I think) that you'd lose both the RAID 1 drives, so you have a much higher probability of not losing your programs and data -- but the best part of all is being able to reboot to your "spare" drive. Of course, once you do, you should replace that failed [once-named] C:Drive, rebuild the RAID 1 array and the +S spare component. However, you're not sitting there with an unbootable machine -- or worse, one with no or incomplete data -- to the point your computer has just become an expensive paper-weight or doorstop! Further, it appears the product is actually an Intel product marketed by Startech, of which we all put a lot of faith into Intel. So, if you've got the need -- and the computer "chops" to handle the technical complexity of installing the drives, the card and setting up their software -- for whichever purpose you're using it -- and you can afford the extra drives (I've got 3 1TB drives that cost me barely over $100 each) -- I think you are getting a good solution. Though I'm an engineer (and not a computer engineer), I've spent most of my career in the computer industry -- and dealing with them personally. If you come up with a better solution for accomplishing this same task and purpose: Please let me know. Best regards!...
This review is from: StarTech.com 4 Port PCI SATA RAID Controller Adapter Card PCISATA4R1If you're building a NAS and using Linux, this is the RAID card you want! It's cheap and it recognizes the big 2TB drives that most older RAID cards can't. I built my media server in a Chenbro NAS case, 4x 2TB Seagate HDs with this StarTech RAID card and FreeNAS. It's working perfectly....
This review is from: StarTech.com 4 Port PCI SATA RAID Controller Adapter Card PCISATA4R1This works really well with Win XP and Linux (2.4 and 2.6 kernel). If you don't have any devices hooked up then the machine will not boot without a FN keypress, but this is probably because I don't have something configured properly....
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