Syba SIL3124 PCI SATA II 4-Port RAID Controller Card

I purchased this unit to make a home-brew nas.Easy to install and configure and the drivers work well with windows 7.Performs just fine for basic to mid performance applications (i wouldn't use it with adobe premiere to stream but) for file storage and retrieval it works well.

After trying to get the card to recognize the drives plugged into the card and receiving a "no valid device" error i contacted syba. They informed me that the device has to boot to an os before you can use the drives on the card. Specifically their email stated "this card's sata ports are not bootable unless a raid array is make and the os is installed on it (not recommended)". So you are adding storage to machine this card could be respond to that. If you want to make a bootable raid array this is not the card for you!

I purchased this card to work with 4 2tb drives with the intention of raid 5, stripping with parity. The drive would not boot into windows 7 with that configuration, even after flashing the controller. Raid 0 and raid 1 would boot.Concatenating the drives, raid 0 stripping, to build an 8tb drive reported to windows as a 6tb and a 2tb. It would not report as an 8tb drive.I settled on two raid 1 drives of 2 tb each and changed the question of the drives. The card as been working for about a week now and performs very well. I have run 4 simultaneous video streams on and off the drives successfully.Thus it does one of my question and is the only reason i don't rate it a 1.Tech support is not existent. The product is sold and delivered by outletpc so you can send it back but that looks like the totality of support.

Plugged card into open pci slot, attached sata cables to 1.5 tb hdds and booted computer. Ctl-s gets you into card bios where i set of a raid 1 array with a couple of key clicks - exit bios saving changes. Re-boot into windows this time and when windows question for driver for new device insert cd that comes with card and point windows to it - presto, siimage drivers installed, raid array good to go.

Wouldn't boot in my dell precision 650 with a drive attached. Hot-plugging the drive after boot and it would freeze. Could be a conflict with the adaptec adapter on the motherboard, but couldn't fix and had to send back.

I have 13 sata devices and my motherboard has only 10 so i bought this device but once i installed it my windows started to produce bsod, i can't update and i had to install windows 8 many times until i figured out that this card might be the problem and once removed, the desktop worked fine.I looked for another device and found highpoint rocket which works perfectly. The only drawback is the price which is more than syba cards.

I purchased this card a few months ago for my samba file server and it has been working, however under sustained heavy data traffic the system will hang periodically.I contacted their customer support and will rma the card. I must say their customer service support(at)sybausa.Com is _very_ responsive, i have gone back and forth with them for a while and they always respond in 20 minutes tops, even late at night. Even though i wasn't able to use the card i'm giving the product 3 stars just because they stand behind it so well.Did you know syba has a 3 year manufacturers warranty? Wow, that's a long time for a budget friendly sata card.

Let me start by stating that this is an initial review of the card when not used as a raid card. I maxed out the sata ports in my motherboard so i was just looking for a card with additional ports. You may get better read/write speeds with a pci-e card but i all i have left is a pci slot.Good:- it comes with the sil3124 chipset (host controller with 4 device ports, 3.0gb/s sata device). Faster than other cards having the sil3114 chipset (1.5gb/s sata device), at least in theory since i haven't checked its performance.- can be used to used up to 4 individual hdds when not configured as a raid. I can't comment on the raid performance since i'm not using it in this manner.- although it doesn't say it anywhere, it can indeed be used to add 4 individual drives. Just install the drivers and skip the raid setup.- that's about it. It works, not much more to say.Bad:- documentation is terrible.- fit is not good. When the card is fully seated in the pci slot the rear plate will not seat flush against the case. When securing the rear plate to the case with the screw there was a significant gap between the two. Driving the screw in probably resulted in slightly bending the motherboard so i just went in enough to keep it from moving. The screw almost wasn't long enough. I though it could be an issue with my case (raidmax super viper) but my other cards fit perfectly.- the supplied cd with the drivers was confusing at first. It had drivers for several devices, not just for this card. The best thing is to go to the website and download the latest drivers.

Works with datoptic silicon image sii-3726 based port multiplier. I have optical and hard drives plugged into it. Works great.

I have been unable to get this to work with my machine. I tried several different os installations. Very disappointed the compatibility was not better developed.