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

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Reliable - applied to shop my CD library and MP3 twin, about 1.two TB data. Have been operating nonstop because June 2006. Not booting from the Array. Quiet. Have seasoned no noise or heat troubles. Had installation difficulties employingASUS A8N-SLI Premium. Upgraded MB BIOS and swapped PCI Express areas with video card (GIGABYTE GV-NX76T256D-RH 7600GT PCI Express x16 Silent Pipe II). That did the trick. LIAN LI Pc-201A Complete TowerXP Pro SP2ASUS A8N-SLI PremiumGIGABYTE GV-NX76T256D-RH 7600GTInformation - Areca ARC-1220 RAID-5 w 8 - 320GB WD3200KS SATA Ƒ hot spare)Boot - Caviar SE WD3200JB 320GB 2 - DVD/CDRW1 GB RAMWorks excellent with wireless Squeezebox and stero receiver.

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Relatively affordable for what you get, Incredibly rapid, works Good for gamers making use of Nvidia 780i boards. The onboard 256MB cache is adequate for most applications and with the optional battery backup unit this card BLAZES! I am currently running 4 WD Velociraptors and I get a small bit over 350MB/sec in RAID5. Contemplating the Velociraptors are only rated to a tiny more than 120MB/sec each, I consider that's a good transfer rate. This card is a big upgrade over Intel ICH9R/ICH10R onboard RAID and a enormous upgrade over Nvidia's onboard RAID. The only con is the GUI management computer software. It's not digitally signed so you have to jump by way of hoops to make it work on Vista 64. The boot-time management software works just fine even though, ever considering that setting up my RAID array the 1st time I haven't had to go back and "manage" my array. I would have also liked to have observed upgradeable RAM (I would have place a gig or two in there) but upgradeable RAM just doesn't appear to exist in this value range. I am running this card on Vista 64 working with an EVGA/Nvidia 780i SLI For The Win board. I was initially concerned that with two GTX280s in SLI mode in slots 1 and 3 that this card would not be pleased sitting in between in slot two. I was very pleased to come across it works just fine there. For onboard RAID you can't beat Intel's stuff, but considering that I wanted to go SLI I essential to go with an Nvidia mobo. IMHO, this card + an Nvidia 780i or 790i is the ultimate gamer's setup. Other than poor RAID (IMHO) Nvidia's chipset is the ideal there is for gamers and this card bridges that gap.For all you gamers out there: I combined this card with a SuperMicro four bay 5.25" RAID enclosure (also bought here from Newegg). I pulled the Velociraptors out of their five.25 icepack and now I have about 1TB of 350MB/sec RAID5 only occupying 1 five.25" slot... fairly trick IMHO.

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Fast, low profile bracket included, passive heatsink included, bootable CD included so the firmware can be updated quickly, nice and extended ࿇") cables included (one side 90 deg, the other side straight plugs), cables have safety clip on the straight side so they won't slide out of your drives. I purchased two of these at function, 1 was DOA (powers on, doesn't show up for the duration of boot). Be advised that RMA for these is by means of Newegg and not Areca straight. That's not genuinely a "con" just a FYI. They perform fine in 4x and 1x PCIe slots. Be advised that most motherboards with many PCIe slots will now enable you to run the further slots in two * 8x configuration. Which means you can run your gfx card at 8x, and then 1 much more PCIe at 8x, but not one particular slot at 16x (gfx) and then two much more at 8x (for most motherboards. So if you buy two of these to run in one method, critique the motherboards very carefully if 8x is important to you.

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I was concerned with the compatibility with Win 7. So far it's operating extremely nicely. Fast build with eight X 1TB Seagate HD's, approx 1 1ǘ - 2 hrs total. I let Windows search the included CD for drivers and they loaded automatically. Easy install and RAID setup!! Haven't identified any at this time. Utilized to stream media through CAT five to PS3. EVGA X58 SLI LE; Intel I7 920; 6 GB DDR3 16008 X 1 TB Seagate BarracudaWindows 7 Ultimate 64 bit

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Great when the BIOS will actually initialize. Ninety-5 percent of the time when powering on the method the BIOS will not initialize. I have to maintain trying unique combinations of power cycles, pull power cord, soft resets, and so on.. in order to lastly get the BIOS to initialize. I have sent this card back on RMA once with them sending it back only to say, "Tests okay!"I also occasionally get NVRAM failures on power up and any time I look at the error log, which is stored in the NVRAM it is often random junk. It was this way when I RMA'd it the 1st time but it nevertheless "Tests okay!" I refuse to spend much more of my dollars for shipping it back on an additional RMA just to get it back once again stating, "Tests okay!" When the controller works, it screams. Nonetheless if you get a card that has troubles and you have to deal with Areca straight, forget about getting your item fixed. Their consumer help takes days to respond and, I think, all they do is pull it out of the box, put it in a diverse a single with a pre-printed note stating, "Tests okay!" They in no way in fact test it.

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It's run reliably for 3+ years now.Setting up arrays is a breeze, adding drives is straightforward, it just works. Wish it was more affordable! Honestly, I don't know of any cons to list of this card... possibly the configuration software program? I'm not a fan of the archttp configuration software, but it operates (if you have a volume setup [windows dilemma, not Areca]) I purchased this in Feb 2007 (it's now Aug 2010.) I've run this on Windows XP, Linux (Debian) and Windows 7 now with no a fault.Would definitely appear to Areca if I ever required one more.

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Just wanted to let everyone know that I got this card to throw into a media server to backup and host all my media for my media center pc. Have this card installed on a Gigabyte 8NSLI MB with 1MB of Ram, Celer-D processor, and 4 WD500YS HDs. Very easily installs on this consumer board in 1 of the two pcie slot. Functions flawlessly and when a single of my drives failed, i replaced it and it rebuilt it automatically. Building a RAID five array with 4 HDs took 2 hours. Software surely operates but is a little "out dated". Had to update drivers mainly because of negative drivers that come on CD...even so quite detailed manual made the entire course of action extremely straightforward. I will see what happens over the subsequent few days. The card even makes it possible for you to solve the 2TB limitation in Windows for a single partition by lowering the sector sizes on initial RAID array creation.

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Affordable, rapid, and fairly straightforward to use. On the web additions to raidsets, modifications to volume groups (stripe or raid kind), in a position to extend the last created volume on a raid set. documentation isn't the strongest (big book, but lots of repetition), cli and http proxy tools are a small hackish in linux upgraded from a 1110 as I was adding a lot more drives than it could support

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This card has been operating practically non stop for two 1ǘ years. I installed it on 1 of my storage servers with eight 640 GB Tough-drives in a RAID 6. It runs stable, and I have not had any problems with it. The RAID was effortless to set up. I would advise this card to any individual seeking to obtain a trustworthy RAID controller. Other than an ugly internet management interface, and a limited selection of settings you can use to configure email alerts (It's a discomfort to configure e mail alerts with third party SMTP servers. It's easy if you have your own SMTP server in house like we do), I don't see any cons that would convince me to not acquire this card once more. Acquire it.

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Extremely Quickly RAID0!!! Makes my old Promise RAID0 look like a snail. $$$

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This is one of the most solid RAID cards I have worked with. (We are at the moment operating cards from Adaptec, Promise, Broadcom, HP and Areca.) This one has been operating a 5 drive RAID five array with Seagate drives considering that 2006 on a Windows XP x64 system. Efficiency is excellent and it has gracefully handled a number of drive failures over the last 3 years. We'll be shopping for far more Areca cards in the future. Web management computer software is based on internet types that look like they had been written in the 1990s. Firmware updates don't seem to perform under IE7. (No issue flashing from Firefox though.) When it comes to what you purchase a RAID for, this is 1 of the ideal... A extremely solid card. Adaptec has the greatest management computer software we've worked with, but is not almost as tolerant of different drive sorts.

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Speedy.Lots of parts (cables, spare Heat Sink, etc.) Compatiblity is an concern.Vendor Support is minimal. I struggled for days to get this part to work in a PCIe 16x slot.Ultimately, I got it to function. Howewer I do not suggest employing this component in a mobo not on Areca's compatiblity list.

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QuickSimpleSmallRebuilds my raid array in much less than 10min Ɣ drive Intel Extreme 32GB SSD Raid five)I accidentally pulled a second drive although the array was rebuilding (while anxiety testing, not in production) and the array was able to recover right after I popped it back in. I take it the array just paused and was able to recoup when the pulled drive was put back in. largest number of ports accessible for a brief ƓU) server.the configuration interface is incredibly standard and unpolished. Adaptec's is so pretty ;-) Excellent card!

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Blazing I/O in Raid 5. Easy to use interfance. Works fine in Windows 7 Ultimate x64. Windows GUI (HTTP) lacks some of the features you get in the card BIOS. Couldn't get this to run stably in XP x64 even with the lastest drivers and firmware from their web-site. Initializing 5x1.5TB in Raid5 took 12 hours. I recommend increasing the 'Background Job Priority' setting to high.

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everyone know if this card works with Win7, or MS Server 2008,Thanks idk, don't own card if not, appreciate any suggestions

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Really rapid, properly supported, and lots of functions. Expensive, but you get what you pay for.

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Uncomplicated to set up, intuitive bios and internet based interface, really rapidly! Net site kinda sucks, drivers on CD are no excellent so you want to download new ones and they can be difficult to find. This card is operating nicely in an Intel D975X motherboard with Windows Modest Organization Server 2003 with no any complaints. I have 5 drives hanging from it (two are mirrored 250's as a boot partition and three are raid five 500 gig drives) for a total over 1TB of storage. I must say that over the last 10 months this card has performed nicely. It handles power outtages well, and gives me no hickups at all. It has a internet interface with services that will send me emails when there is an alert (of which I have to maintain testing simply because it never ever sends any ... LOL) ... all in all this has been the best RAID card I have ever purchased.

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Great Card had it for a year running a raid 6 on 8 drive and never had a difficulty none

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Speed = Really Rapidly Card. Also, many of you complain about how high-priced this card is. I beg to differ, go find a competitors card that has the very same specs/performance and see how a lot it costs! We are all spoiled! I develop servers with these cards all the time and I have in all probability bought more than 20 of these boards so far. Overall, I couldn't be happier with the performance and speed. Sorry, no tech information... The net interface is somewhat dull but overall usable when you get the hang of it. Poor documentation in my opinion. Lastly, out of all teh boards I have utilised, two of them have the same problem, they keep failing drive two for no reason. I have not located anything online so far and I have to now encounter Areca's customer service for the initial time. I guess we'll see how it goes. I recommend finding the battery backup unit. This card is a have to buy!

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I've purchased 3 of these cards, 1 for myself, and two for function. They absolutely smoke the 3Ware cards we used previously in performance, and were easy to set up and configure.I've run them below Windows Server 2000,2003, and Debian. Great under all OSes. Debian did not support the card natively when I very first installed it, which created installing onto the RAID volume tricky -- I expect this is completely resolved in the most recent distros, although. I have *not* yet lived by way of a accurate drive crash, due to the fact I pull drives the moment they start to exhibit Wise errors, so I can't comment on this part of the RAID, however. Has any person?

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This is an wonderful item, went from a raid setup on my mobo, to a raid five on this card and it doubled my transfer rates to a minmum rate of 190mb/s. Setup up was a breeze, making the array with 3x1TB drives took aobut three hours. Though I did see a wonderful increase in speed, I was expecting it to be a tad bit quicker, also the card did get a tad bit hot but that was quickly fixed by placing a pci slot fan above te card. Overall I am pretty pleased with tha card, and I am planning to buy a second one for one of my home media servers.

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It's simple to install and set up. It works properly and has a decent management interface with lots of very good functions available. Optional battery backup for the write cache. RAID 6 capability, although I haven't used it. None at all. It's been best for me considering that day one. I've had 6 drives on this card in a couple of diverse RAIDs for about two years and not a single issue. The battery backup for the write cache is excellent too. You wouldn't want to enable the write cache with out the battery and it's crazy quickly with it (for up to 256 meg writes at a time, of course). I applied to like Promise controllers for the value, but I'm a convert to Areca now.

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good card for demanding RAID setups. Particularly rapidly. I'm acquiring 350MB/sec reads off my raid five setup Ɩx 2TB drives) and 250MB/sec writes. Random writes get as low as 60MB/sec which is still significantly faster than a lone drive. The management utilities definitely SUCK! Terrible HTML interface and firmware updating doesn't appear to function. Oh well, wonderful card if you don't have to manage it.

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Sent detailed assessment yesterday, but it is nonetheless not published.This controller is equipped with 256MB Memory, not 128MB as it is in NewEgg's specifications!Stagged power-on feature is incredibly critical if you have much more than 4-5 HDDs - it allow you setup time interval for spin-up for your challenging drives. This is crucial simply because you need a lot more power for HDDs only when they initially spin-up. Not pleased with Areca's support. Sent question about my issue with 1220 and yellow exclamation mark in Windows 2003 device manager for PCIe-to-PCI bridge B on Friday, got automatic confirmation, and nonetheless no answer! For that reason - four eggs. This controller is very very good and fast if you get it working on your motherboard. I am running it on Intel P975XBX2 (with problem above) and will test it today with ASUS P5WDG2-WS PRO. Replaced Promise 8350 with this 1220 - promise looks like entry-level toy compare with Areca, running 6x500GB WD RE2 in RAID 6 plus 2xSeagate 250GB onboard Intel Matrix RAID 10 for method - 2TB redundant storage...with two additional HDDs ﯴGB will get total of 3TB.... nice :-)

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Excellent upgrade from onboard (MB) raid. Small pricey.Sata connectors don't make use of metal snap ins. My Program - XP 64 bitAMD Phenom II X4 940 Deneb 3.0GHzMB - ASRock K10N780SLIX3-WiFi 8 GB Kingston Mem 533 MHZ Ɣx2 GB)Acera 1220 - 6 Seagate 500 MB + two Seagate 750 GBXFX Nvidia GeForce 7900 GT