areca ARC-1220 PCI-Express x8 SATA II (3.0Gb/s) Controller Card

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Extremely rapid and versatile. Flexibility is practically unlimited. You can do nearly whatever you want with your arrays with no losing information. Very configurable and stable. Operates fine in my Intel DX38BT motherboard in second VGA slot (PCIe x16). Low cost software package comes with it. Windows "storport" drivers are OK, but management applications are just about useless. A single can only actually use them for taking a look at the drive temperature. Not a large deal although, as you can do every thing from the firmware menu. Highly suggested. I got sustained read speed of more than 150 MB/s on RAID 1 (two Seagate ST31000340AS 1 TB drives) in Windows Vista. Tested all attainable RAID migrations with no any information loss.

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Great transfer rate. Major step up from MyBookWorld II (Haha, no real comparison). Plenty of drives Ƙ SATA II drive total). No issue from install to finish, rapid and straightforward. Exactly what I am hunting for to put into my media server. Ultra pricey. Under no circumstances thought I pay practically 1ǘ my storage space Ɣ x 1.5TB drive) for just one controller card. But I want plenty of transfer rate. Could likely acquire another Computer for this price tag. Only get a three star since it was so pricey. Really, seriously will need to lower the price on this to hit major stream. But then again, not might people will need 12TB of storage space.

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Rapid and stable. No problems with stability. Does not appear to perform so properly with Vista SP1. I cannot get it to boot, but it operates fine if I use it as a secondary disk. Wish they would fix the boot challenge on Vista SP1.

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I set up this card in a consumer's system with 5 seagate 750 gig hds, in raid five. ƒ.72 tbs) Used the Intel 975xbx mobo. Posted and set up with no issues. Method has 1 gig memory. We had to turn off that annoying beeping in the card bios, due to the fact it wouldnt cease. Other than that it appears to be functioning good. Card appears picky about the boards it likes. Initial tried it in an ASUS P5LD2vm mobo; that didn't work at all. I dont assume the motherboard was wise enough to run each the onboard video and the PCIexpress slot with this card.

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160 mBps for four drive RAID6!!!!add a lot more drives without powering down. web interface is not the simplest to use, but it is still functional.

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Replaced Promise 8350 with this in my SOHO server running Windows 2003 R2 on Intel P975XBX2 with 2x250GB for program (on-board RAID) and 6xWD 500GB RE2 in RAID 6 for redundancy.The controller came equipped with 256MB memory and stock fan is quiet! If you prefer fanless remedy, the radiator is in the box. It utilizes Intel 8033 processor – the similar as Areca’s 12-port card and I am pretty confident the firmware is just about the similar.RAID setup utility (press F6 to enter) is considerably additional function wealthy than Promise, and everybody with simple expertise need to be able to setup own RAID set / volume with no issue making use of 200-pages illustrated manual.Was capable to use any of 3xPCIe ports without complications, firmware update went smooth (Promise RAID died following firmware update and that was the reason to replace it with Areca).You can transform RAID levels on the fly–I mean, you can migrate from RAID 10 to RAID 5or6 or and nevertheless have your information on the array. The migration method takes much more than 8h. On Intel P975XBX2 Widows 2003 device manager show me yellow exclamation mark for secondary Intel 80333 PCIe-to-PCI bridge, but I nonetheless can use the controller with 6 HDDs connected and configured as 2 volumes. Not positive exactly where the issue is – OS or motherboard-related, so I ordered new mobo (ASUS P5WDG2-WS PRO) to come across it.A different difficulty is Areca’s assistance, probably since it is overseas. Sent them comprehensive description about my challenge above on Friday, got automatic confirmation by e mail, and today is Monday evening and nevertheless no answer! This can\'t be a support for products applied in servers! No one will use their controller in enterprises or in production envinronment if they can’t respond on time.. Will get in touch with them tomorrow to see what they will tell…Internet interface for their OS-based RAID config utility is ugly and looks outdates like a thing from early 󈦺s. Maybe they can invest in couple hours programmers operate to boost it, ideal? Now is 2007, you know…:-) There are connectors on the board for backup battery and for status indicators, but there are no indicators (and cables with connectors for them) accessible on their web page. It would be good if we can acquire a block of status indicators which can be used, say, in empty five.25" slot or just bunch of indicators with cables and connectors - everyone can buy as many of them as required for his/her controller.Lastly, I did some rapid tests (still testing the controller with numerous combinations of HDDs and RAID levels and will share the results in couple of days right here). Appears like RAID 6 will be preferred level due to the fact of redundancy and greater capacity vs RAID 10 which is faster (write).Gave 4 “eggs” due to the fact of help and nonetheless unresolved problem with exclamation mark in Windows device manager, but if I discovered exactly where the difficulty is, will post the corrections later (will do the same about ASUS as effectively). General, it is good product and I liked it substantially far more than Promise. Employed ten-20 RAIDs in past y

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I'm positive there are some, but I couldn't come across any. Did not perform, see below In my Abit IP35 Pro motherboard, the controller would hang with the message "Waiting for RAID Controller F/W to develop into ready". I updated my motherboard firmware - no enable. I place the controller in yet another laptop or computer and it worked, so I updated it's BIOS. Nonetheless did not perform in my IP35 Pro. As talked about just before, tech assistance from Areca is a JOKE as I received no actual help. I have RMAed the card and am going to try a RocketRaid card next.

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can't complain - this card is function wealthy and has *never* let me down. BIOS and firmware updates have all run smoothly. Raid recovers from errors flawlessly, and imports foreign arrays really well. In a case transplant I incorrectly wired a handful of cables, which regrettably the controller couldn't figure out, but when I fixed them it continued with out freaking out (like attempting to rebuild) Has any individual figured out a shell script or the like for linux that will start off the HTTP app as a service on boot? Immediately after virtually a year of operating an 8-drive raid five, i started receiving errors - the array would drop a drive (the same drive each time) increasingly often. I would pull the drive, pop it back in and let it rebuild...until it occurred so typically it couldn't even finish rebuilding just before it dropped the drive again. (I RMAd the HD at that point....same challenge with the new drive). Areca's "support" was no help, but ultimately I figured out that it was a negative cable on that channel (i really replaced it ahead of, I apparently had 2 poor cables). In that entire expertise, their only "techie"...the barely-english-speaking Mr. Chen was particularly unhelpful. BUT, none of this is the card's fault - it's just a excellent instance of how poor their assistance is. I'm running this on a Tomcat S2866G3NR with an Athlon 3700 and 2x512 Critical DC. OS = Redhat Enterprise Linux. Loaded the drivers with the OS install (was challenging to compile post-install) and under no circumstances had a challenge

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Management tools, overall performance. I've had some strange IOWAIT problems in Linux ƒ.6) with this card. I especially purchased a Tyan S2865AG2NRF motherboard as it was listed as problem-free of charge on Areca's hardware compatibility list, nonetheless regardless of numerous configurations and reinstalls, my IOWAIT values max to 100% and stall the method intermittently. I've contacted Areca's assistance but we've not been in a position to resolve the issue. Regrettably the Tyan S2865AG2NRF motherboard primarily won't work in Linux without using ACPI, which is kind of an situation in trying to resolve this. Seagate Barracua 7200.9 300GB drives are not on their HW list as of now, but their assistance didn't appear to have an challenge with them. I hope Areca update their compatibility lists ASAP.

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8 Ports, PCIe 8x, Reliable. Excellent feature set and RAID 6 help. Price tag, CPU only clocked @ 500 MHz. This model has been out for various years / slightly dated. Internet interface is ugly (not a huge deal). Only 256 MB Ram / not upgradable. Wonderful RAID card with solid function set. A small high-priced for what you get but Areca tends to make some fairly fantastic stuff.

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It's the True Deal, not the Fake-A-Raid that comes on a motherboard.This card had zero conflicts with gear on my system. Instructions were detailed and straightforward to use. The config layouts are very user friendly. It makes for a pleasant Raid Array walkthrough.Speeds are wonderful for a Raid six config.No Bios conflicts with booting Vista Ultimate and/or when booting into the raid bios.Great product. negative

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Great attributes, quick array rebuilds (compared to other controllers), simple to use bios and http interface for configuring a raid array. All cables and brackets are integrated, good top quality cables also. None seriously, its a very very good controller. I have an array consisting of WD WD5000AAKS 500GB difficult drives. Array operates excellent. Highly recommended card. I am utilizing this card in an ASUS P3N32-E SLI motherboard.

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I had 4 Mtron SSD ready to go to try to speed up my SQL server. These drive are impressive but Intel's RAID Matrix Process kills them. I really am still employing a Windows 2000 server which is not even supported by Matrix Raid systems so I was going to use a hardware RAID. The setup on the bios is quite straight forward and you just smile and feel this is going to be so easy. Lets you create Raid 1Ʈ with odd numbers of drives and lets you in fact adjust Raid settings without erasing all information. Issues were going excellent until I tried to use it. I just could not get this method to perform. The integrated software program was written by an individual who lives in Linex and hasn't seen Windows or a GUI. Who knows if I included the right drivers as they are not labeled extremely properly and definitely don't autoload. I was operating in Windows 2000 which expected a F6 to load a SCSI driver but the disk I got from ARECA doesn't inform you how to come across these files. They have to fit on a floppy (drive A only). I rebooted lots of times working on this. I swear every time I turned the method on my RAID was rebuilding - each time and the system would hang forever waiting for it. I tossed out my new Mtrons and pulled out some SATA disk drives and very same issue. I never could get an operating program installed on a RAID disk I constructed except for a single disk as a pass even though disk. With all these rebuilds when in RAID I definitely am not going to trust this with my crucial sql information. Web internet site is $%&#$ Gigabyte GA-X48T-DQ6, OCZ 1800 reaper, Q9550, Mtron SSD and Western Digital 1T drives. Tried Windows 2000 Small business Server (never got installed) and Windows XP which installed only on pass even though disk but never ever could see the RAID drives. This is probably a extremely very good item with terrible drivers, terrible documentation, hell I probably am not installing the right drivers either on line or with disk integrated, terrible support. This will probably delay my upgrade cycle by numerous weeks!!

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The card performs well for the cost and has fantastic general specs. So an update with regards to my preceding post. I bought this card on 01ቧ񳏋 (go figure) and as soon as I installed it in the new server, it kept failing drive 2. I swapped drives thinking thats the difficulty, no dice, port two kept failing. I swapped SATA cables, no luck, ordered a new HDD cage, no LUCK..So definitely its the controller. It would strangely work for about two hours (while i setup SERVER OS and drivers, updates and other apps) and then all of asudden commence beeping and show Disk2 Failed. - I contacted ARECA in Taiwan on March 14th, they deffered me to "TEKRAM USA" a Nearby organization for the RMA. - I sent them an e mail, days later I got an RMA number and instructions. I sent them the board, waited 1 week and received a box in the mail. - Packing slip said "BOARD TESTED OK" and "PORT 7 OK" and "RETURN TO Consumer"... I sent them an email and they replied with "SORRY" and I asked for an advanced RMA or a thing and there has been no response for 4 days now. Absolutely THE WORST RMA! I have By no means had any manufacturer or their repair facility send me back the broken/defective item that I sent to them. Some just take forever, some just wont even respond. This is by far the worst, I waited virtually 3 weeks to have my BRAND NEW card replaced and I got the identical one particular back since of somebody's incompetency or just laziness. I have one more board from a various client that has the exact same problem now and I am MAD at TEKRAM for their Incredibly poor service. I will escalate this to NEWEGG and if newegg fails to aid me because I devote ๠k a year or so right here, I will do a chargeback and under no circumstances get areca and never ever buy from newegg. Stay AWAY IF YOU Need to have Quickly WARRANTY, OR Obtain EXTRAS AS SPARES (like I did) AND THEN THROW AWAY THE DEFECTIVE ONES.... I AM Extremely UPSET.

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Like everybody else's comment beneath, it's a superior card compared to any other 8-port out there. But... My initial one was DOA. I could create containers, initialize drives, and so forth. But one you started to copy huge > 1 GB files, the technique would lock up. Searching at the Controller's Error Log (excellent function btw!), I see quite a few "DRAM Fatal Error"s.Contacted assistance, and you can NOT return this item to the manufacturer. Ought to go by way of a distributor, which they only have a 15 to 30 day return policy. Superior card (when operating) but quite poor warranty support/exchange (none). Technical assistance was pretty great but only by way of Email although - no telephone and not in US.

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Comments: Far and away the very best raid controller I've ever applied. High pcie bandwidth and insane throughput on bonnie++ benchmarks, plus opensourced drivers for linux and freebsd. Worth it's weight in gold.

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I was employing the onboard RAID5 on an ABIT AN8 32X and an ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe and the performance raise was huge. Nevertheless, retain in mind that this card is not 100% compatible with these mothboards as effectively as most other consumer level boards with PCIE slots designed for video cards in SLI mode. Areca's compatibility list is outdated, but essentially it sounds like you will need a server board to get this running at peak overall performance. I came property from work one particular day and the card wasn't being detected at all any longer. I tried the card in a distinct laptop or computer with the exact same result. As it has been stated prior to, Areca's client service is HORRIBLE!!! I can't pressure this adequate. Just about every time I called they answered "Hi.", not "Thank you for calling Areca...", which produced me really feel like I had the wrong quantity. The tech I spoke to sounded fairly knowledgable, but didn't speak English extremely effectively. They promised to call me back with the status of my card several occasions and never ever did. At one particular point they tried to inform me that the card was damaged from a static discharge. This is the initial time I have ever sent a product back to a business and worried that I was going to get taken advantage of. I sent the card in on 05-11-07 and it is supposedly comming back Fed Ex tomorrow ྦ-22-07). They originally told me that it would take 2 weeks, but didn't mention that ALL repairs are performed in Taiwan. I bought this card based on the reviews it was finding from websites like Tomshardware, and so on. Bottom line, I think this card has exceptional overall performance and would be a excellent fit for some property users that don't mind taking a threat on obtaining a negative card; but I would By no means suggest this card for a small business due to the poor buyer service. In contrast, I sent an AMD 3800 X2 back to AMD for RMA on the exact same date ྥ-11-07), received an e-mail on 05-16-07 saying the RMA was authorized, and received a brand new FX60 on 05-21-07.

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wonderful raid controller, really excellent efficiency and really great raid management. raid6 support and on-line volume expansion. none you will not regret this obtain

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-8 Person SATA II Ports-Expansion Capabilities (suck as battery backup)-Tiny Card Overrall fantastic for tight builds-Onboard Chip Cooler (mine was in fact seated properly) The starting directions are extremely vague. I had to fight with the controller when I lost a drive to actually use the new drive and create to it (apparently you need to set the new drive as a "Hot Swap", then go to rebuild array and it will commence rebuilding, I did it inside Windows 7 with the net interface). When it lastly took, the card was automatically set in low priority, and I nonetheless haven't figured out how to alter it to high priority, so a RAID five with 255gb of information took nearly 30 hours to complete, which needless to say, sucked. I was able to set up the controller pretty speedy when I disabled the RAID controller on the motherboard, I was in a position to see the controller in the BIOS. I set the new RAID 5 with the 8 drives, but even in high priority mode took 3 days to initialize, that hurt but I was leaving for a while anyways so was fine). Then I had to enable the onboard RAID which disabled being in a position to see the RAID controller in the BIOS, which was ok considering that I can't boot to ten+TB anyways. Following Windows 7 installed I just was able to modify all the program setup stuff in Windows so I didn't need to see it booting up anymore.MSI 870a-g54Athlon 1090T 6core AM3 CPU1350watt PSU2x 320gb SATA II Raid Principal Boot8x 1.5TB Seagate Barracuda 7.2k RPM RAID 53x Plextor SATA DVD RWATI Radeon 9250Custom Liquid Cooling for GPU, NB, SB, HDD(x10), CPUFull Tower SituationUSB 802.11n Draft

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It works very effectively in RAID five with 5 Western Digital 750GB WD7501AALS Tough Drives. Operates great in Linux! :) Can dynamically add challenging drives to an current RAID configuration to expand it. The web based interface isn't so pretty, but you can also use the BIOS level configuration menu, or a CLI interface. Took about 6 hours to create my RAID 5 configuration with the 5 750GB challenging drives. I plan on dynamically adding two or 3 far more tricky drives for over 4TB of storage space! :)

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This is a fantastic RAID SATA Card. It is rapid and stable. I have not had any problems with it because I bought it. I purchased it in May well of ང, and it's been operating virtually 24ǝ ever due to the fact. I use it in my household storage server. I installed 6 Western Digital WD6400AAKS in RAID6 initially. Six months later, I added two additional drives (same model - WD6400AAKS) and expanded the array without losing any information or bringing the server down. It operates as advertised. I am really happy with this buy. The web interface is ugly and could use some far more characteristics. For some purpose, it doesn't report the temperature on my person difficult-drives. I am not sure why, and I didn't really appear as well significantly into it because I hold my pc closet at an acceptable temperature. These troubles are not enough for me to give it less than five eggs even though. This is a amazing product. This card tends to get hot when using the passive cooling remedy included with it. This is the case with any other card that makes use of passive cooling when you lack proper air flow even though. So make sure your case air flow is very good, and make confident your space temperature is acceptable for a server/PC. In my case, I wasn't comfortable with the temperature. So I decided to go back to active cooling.

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Really high speedsPCI ExpressDependable Poor motherboard/chipset compatibility documentationPoor driver documentation Operating with eVGA 132-CK-NF78 (nForce 780i) for more than a year. Employing 3 Seagate ST3750640AS 750GB drive in RAID five with 2 150GB WD Raptors in RAID . No challenge utilizing each arrays. Utilized same setup on an nForce 4 board for 2 years.Had a single of the RAID5 drives fail final year. Rebuilding the array was no dilemma at all.

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Average read rates are better than what you can get making use of a motherboard's built-in RAID. Burst rates are less than what you can get utilizing a motherboard's built-in RAID. Causes PCI device conflicts and renders some motherboard integrated peripherals unusable. This presents excellent information security and redundancy possibilities, not to mention sophisticated array constructing and maintenance functions - if that's what you want. Nonetheless, for sheer efficiency, it's only mediocre, and you'll require to invest far more for a model such as the Areca 1231ML to actually open the floodgates on information transmission bandwidth. This unit tops out someplace south of 500MBPS; for comparison, my motherboard's built-in RAID can exceed 650MBPS, and Areca's 1231ML can hit 1200MBPS. This apparently is a limitation of this unit's processor. Also note that it will render your JMicron eSATA device unusable on Asus motherboards; in fact, if you don't go into the BIOS and entirely disable the eSATA device, you won't ever have the solution of entering the RAID card's settings at POST (and thus won't be in a position to set it as the boot drive). You could still access RAID settings from inside an OS through a browser, but then that signifies by definition you had been utilizing some other drive to boot.

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quite fast boot after the card has initialized using 2 60GB OCZ SSD'd in raid . ㅌ seconds. Applications load instantly, and is prepared to use two seconds soon after entering the password at the log in screen. my setup takes about 30 seconds just before its ready to boot. this is also utilizing the on board mobo raid. when turned on or restarted the card does make a very loud beep, and it takes about 25 seconds to come out of sleep mode. employing this card with a Asus Crosshair 3 am3 mobo, no issues at all. functions with windows 7 x64. took about three hours to initialize the 4x500GB wd raid 5, and have not tried to expand a raid however.

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Comments: I own three of these. This is an outstanding card in every single way. The performance is very first rate (includes NCQ, and it operates great). They give you a Large book of documentation, the help is excellent, and the management software program is great. I have utilised a significant number of raid cards and would extremely advise this a single.