MASSCOOL PCI Card, 4 internal SATA Model XWT-RC040

Comment:
Affordable. Seems of fair create top quality. Major sign off the bat was the ridiculously several spelling or wording errors in the manual. They desperately want an English editor. Site appears to just go in circles. Can't uncover any support for anything but coolers. Won't perform for me. The motherboard I got it for acts like nothing is there. Causes my main rig to hang on POST. As far as I'm concerned, this factor is worthless. Even if it worked, I overlooked that it is SATA I. It would be nice if Newegg stated the 1.5gbps transfer speed in the specifications.

Comment:
NONE, it doesn't perform out of the box. Time is income. Study this review. How can a thing so affordable be so infuriating. Does not work with big drives. I attempted to set up a 1 TB and the computer system hangs. I named Masscool, and they stated that they had the updated bios and in no way sent me the file. I attempted to return it to Newegg and they sent me a replacement, which doesn't perform. Usually I am happy with Newegg, but this time they messed up. It is not worth it to send it back once more, it wasn't the first time, so I will try and get it to work.Do your self a favor and get some thing else!

Comment:
showed up intact, with two SATA cables Could not get functioning drivers below WinXP or Server 2k3. Masscool's internet site only has Win7 drivers posted. Could not get the generic Silicon Image driver to perform beneath either OS, either. As other people have noted, the SATA ports feel genuinely low-cost. Seems that this card is fantastic if you have Win7. If not, skip it. Spend a small far more for a card that has driver help for the OS that nevertheless has 75% marketplace share.

Comment:
This card does the ideal trick for my Windows 2003 Server. I use it for a 500 gb and a 1 tb drive and still have two open slots!!! Initially the card did not recognize my 1 tb drive. The default bios had a limit of 500 gb. You have to have a working drive connected to the card, then flash the bios with the most up to date version. You can uncover them on the Chip Manufacture's Site (not the Card's).

Comment:
Low-cost, dependable, FreeBSD compatible, now shipping with correct (r5403) bios so setup just got a even easier.... All round very a fantastic tiny card. Years in service! None This is my 4th purchase of this card. The very first one was a little frustrating finding the facts for flashing, but the following two had been a piece of cake (other reviewers have since outlined this method quite a few occasions - five minutes tops). Considerably to my surprise, when my fourth a single arrived yesterday it seems that somebody lastly got the message and the right bios was loaded from the factory! This must make it significantly simpler for those who have been on the fence about this card for that reason! I should note that I have only applied this card as a SATA controller for beneath FreeBSD (FreeNAS especially) with software program raid, and now ZFS :) and it has never ever let me down... but I can not speak for it's on board soft raid functions or Winders. Cheers!

Comment:
Low price four port sata card. Windows 7 discovered drivers and card worked proper out of the box, no drivers or software program other than the drivers widows 7 found. It would only perform with drives 500G or smaller. I flashed the bios and it now requires 1TB drives. I have not attempted drives larger than 1TB so don't know if they will function or not. Flash bios is a discomfort. My system does not have floppy so boot dos to run the flash utility program was a project. Only 4 eggs for obtaining to flash the bios and only sata1 Ƒ.5g). Fantastic card lets me run 2 added raid 1 sets on my server.

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Inexpensive PCI sata card Some issuses with intel 945 chipset, requirements to be flashed with bios from update, Bios list the really hard drive on the card as scsi and is in a position to boot from it... functions ok in vista 32bit

Comment:
i wanted to run four challenging drives and only had four sata ports on mb just necessary this to run dvd rom drive it performs very good for that though it is not bootable it came with guidelines to make it so i just didnt bother to study them running win 7 64 after installing card when i attempted to boot up i discovered it had changed my primary boot drive in the bios had to go into bios and transform it back then had to go to win update to get drivers it does do what i wanted it to do just a pain to set up

Comment:
Cheap and Very good worth. Uses a lot of processing power to access really hard drives. Data speeds from really hard drives will be slower. Just like other people have said the SATA connectors are very poor and appear like a strong breeze would break them. SATA Locks don't work on them. Card was a incredibly tight match in the slot. Didn't have to do any filing, but I did have to use a fair quantity of pressure. You get what you spend for. If you want superior performance you're going to have to commit a lot much more.

Comment:
Enables me to set up newer style, massive HD's in an old server box. Took the card out of the box, attached the supplied SATA connector cables to my pair of drives, installed the card and drives, and booted the machine. No drivers necessary as WinXP got the most current from windows update. 1. the driver CD that came with it was blank. I now have a three.5-inch blank recordable CD. Thanks MassCool. :-)two. Note that if you have ONLY ATA style power connectors in your box, you'll need to have a thing like N82E16812104652 to get those new SATA drives powered. Want I'd known about Š con above when I was ordering, but a second order to newegg solved that difficulty.

Comment:
Functions Great out of the box In Windows, Linux, FreeBSDLoad the b5403(BASIC NON-RAID) BIOS if you're using OPENSolaris which is what I ultimately settled on to take advantage of native ZFS. None

Comment:
Working with this in an older pc I decided to use as a file server and torrent laptop. Had three SATA challenging drives I needed to place in it. I installed it and I think I ended up just having Windows 7 install the drivers for me. It functions fine and gives me quite rapid speeds. None once I had Windows install the drivers. Glad to have SATA in an old computer. Should perform fine for customers utilizing Windows 7 if they just get Windows Update to install the drivers.

Comment:
Affordable, 4 Ports, Ships with new 5.4..three bios for 1TB drives. CD did not include the drivers, Masscool web site only consists of the Windows 7 drivers. moviemadnessman is a life saver. Go to: http://www.siliconimage.com/products/product.aspx?pid៰ and click driver on correct side. Download the appropriate drivers here. Took me an hour before I came on here to locate a solution. CD drivers have been all incorrect. Attempted manually installing with each one. Figured if they place a cd with drivers on it, there have to a correct driver on right here. NOPE. Download them utilizing the link above and don't waste your time.

Comment:
This factor is wonderful. Excellent for my demands. Got my three 500gig drives with soft-raid. Some complained that they had to use sandpaper or a hammer to get the card to match, but my card match perfectly. Updating the bios was annoying. My thanks to the prior individuals that reviewed this. This permitted me to know precisely what I was obtaining into.

Comment:
none -Ca not say about other OS's because I only want it for NT4 States it supports NT4 - A waiste of time and work.Does not function with NT4 SP6 at all.Other sites on the internet say it does not and other people says it does for the identical item. This is just 1 of numerous that states it runs in NT4 but does not. I have spent about 赨 with these interfaces only to experience deception from makers. I do not hold Newegg accountable because they have such a vast inventory and most of the time have to give the manufacturer the initially shot at honest marketing and advertising and sales. Get the specs proper for legacy systems.

Comment:
1TB drives do function. Bios updater from SI doesn't truly recognize this card. I cannot flash this. Server won't boot with drives attached to the card. Thankfully I have them in a cage. I have to pop my drives out, let the server boot, then reseat them in the SATA cage and let the server rebuild them. Neglect you ever saw this card.

Comment:
Low-cost board with higher number of SATA connections. DOA. Study the reviews - yeah, I had problems seating the card, but it wasn't also undesirable. Supplied CD was not blank, but wildly unique from directions. Still, a driver could be found - whether or not correct or not, who knows? I bought this card to replace an current functional SATA board with only one slot, but under no circumstances got the Masscool to perform. It is at the moment in the trash can and I'm ordering a diverse card. On bootup, it recognizes my really hard drive, but then locks up. Never ever even makes it to my regular boot menu let alone trying to begin Windows. Nonetheless waiting on word from their help - hello? Anybody there? It's been two weeks... Sure the card is inexpensive, but really, guys - quality assurance?

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Certainly none. Following wasting an complete day trying to get this to function adequately on a Ubuntu Server box and not getting anything I attempted to get it to perform on a Windows 7 box. This card is trash. Now I have to waste more cash to hopefully get a refund. Just don't obtain it.

Comment:
Very cost-effective, Has 4 internal SATA connectors, Supports RAID, comes with All the drivers you want, Came with 2 SATA cables, Has Black PCB ;-) , Incredibly uncomplicated installation (Win XP Pro). Like all other folks described - It does not fit completely in the PCI slot. I knew that just before I bought it, so sanding the gaps on the card helped it a lot. The way to install is as follows: Turn Off Pc. Put Masscool card in pci slot (after sanding it :-) ). Plug your SATA devices straight to the Masscool adapter. DON'T place the driver cd in the drive yet !!. Turn Pc on. Wait for XP to start the "Found New Hardware" installation wizard. Direct it to the SIL3114RAID folder (even if you are NOT installing RAID). Click OK and you are done. you will see win XP recognizing your hardware. I pluged into it a SATA DVD-ROM burner SH-183L and a SATA 120gb HDD (WD1200JD). It went smooth. Shipping was quickly too!Will purchase once again and suggest to other folks (but know what you want to do 1st).

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Card recognized in Ubuntu 8.04 w/o any work. 4 new internal ports for SATA by means of PCI! Had to flash the bios on the card ahead of it would recognize my 750 GB SATA Drive. Card halts boot in the course of boot if your drive is bigger than 750. To get around this, I had to place FreeDOS on a bootable floppy (might operate on CD?) along with the updated System board BIOS from SI's website (http://www.siliconimage.com/support/supportsearchresults.aspx?pid៰&cid៣&ctidɤ&osidɢ&). After I flashed the card, it recognized my drive, and permitted me to install it to my LVM. Did not have to mess with Linux to get the card to work. If your drive is smaller than 750 I think about you would be fine.

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used to enhance an old personal computer worked like a charm. basic to set up. be gentle though kinda flimsy

Comment:
Price, four Ports If all the ports worked this would be a excellent card. Out of the box only three worked. Then when trying to change from the broken port to the 3rd operational the entire port came off in the cable. No, I didn't wiggle it. The card is that poorly constructed. Also I have to echo other testimonials when they say the card is a ttttiiiiiiggght fit in the PCI slot.

Comment:
Does work with my 1TB drive thanks to the measures by moviemadnessman. It is sort of a discomfort to make the boot disk and update the bios on the card, but it did work for me. I had to hook up a 3.five" drive to flash the bios of the card.

Comment:
It functions fine if you know how to beat the driver installation process (new O/S) installation. I can see this as wayy to complicated for the "average" user to install the drivers necessary to run this for an O/S installation.I identified it easiest to copy the driver I required (XP) from the cd it came with onto a floppy disk. You can't just copy the whole cd for the reason that it won't fit, so you have to acquire the actual driver inside the cd and copy only that driver folder/file. Run the 3rd celebration raid/scsi setup on a new install and insert the disk when prompted. Read my con!

Comment:
cheap As many have pointed out, you want to flash the Bios to get this working with bigger drives. Not a terrible hurdle until you find out that Silicon Image doesn't host the Bios versions any more, making you scurry across the web hoping to discover a cached version someplace.Assistance is non-existent from masscool as well. Nicely, it is worse than non-existent. When I named them the tech help didn't even know that they had a 4 port Sata PCI card at very first. The moment I convinced the tech that they did indeed make a card and gave him the model number to check I received the most lackluster tech support in my life. This sordid tale ended with the tech support truly just placing down the telephone and walking away. I spent 20 minutes listening to them shuffling about in the background nary a response prior to I finally gave up and hung up. I don't mind performing a tiny extra function to save myself a couple bucks. Flashing the BIOS was an acceptable tradeoff for the price tag. At this point even though, the weeks of difficulty combined with an uneducated and shady tech assistance staff isn't worth it. Spend a couple extra bucks and get a card from a diverse manufacturer.