Esata II Expresscard Raid

List Price: $110.34 Discount Price: $74.74

Features:

• Product Type - SATA RAID Controller
• Cache/Memory Installed - N/A
• Processor - N/A
• Weight - 0.8 lb

Customer Reviews:

Ok, Another Run Don't Walk ESATA product [Posted on 2007-07-12]
This SIIG card works as promised for SATA products available at the time of its release, but it falls flat for new external drives.

I've used it for a Seagate 500 gig external drive, circa 2006. It's fine, requires that you place its own RAID overlay on the drive, even if you're using RAID 0. Ok, that means that I can't swap this external drive with other machines - I can put up with that for the convenience of in the field capture and editing.

But I've now tried two newer external SATA drives with this card and neither of them works properly. One is a Seagate, one is an less well-known brand, not for sale on Amazon. They both were difficult to format with this SIIG card and both are now incapable of being used as capture drives for Cineform's Neo-HDV OR Sony Vegas 7.

I tested a Seagate FreeAgent 750 gig drive before I reinstalled it for the SIIG card - it worked perfectly, even on Windows Vista. Now it won't event let me transfer more than one file at a time to it.

I'll be returning this card and looking for a serious replacement. How about a card that can read NTSF-formatted disks? The FreeAgent drive came pre-formatted with backup software on the drive - of couse, useless now.

Another bleeding edge soap opera.

Very compatible, very fast. [Posted on 2008-04-26]
I've just set this card up with two Seagate ST307504FPA1E3-RK FreeAgent Pro 750 GB USB/eSATA/FireWire400 External Hard Drives - it installed under Windows Vista Ultimate on an Everex laptop without needing the driver CD - as RAID 0. I then took those drives to an older Compaq desktop I use as a file server, running XP Pro, hooked the two drives up to its Sabrent PCI 2 port RAID eSATA controller, which runs different firmware and drivers, and Windows Drive Manager, when told to import the foreign format, recognized the striped array, and set it up correctly, even maintaining the drive letter I had assigned. The Drive Managers in XP Pro and Vista Ultimate appear to be fully RAID conversant, at least with regard to RAID levels 0,1, and 10, and the format created by the SIIG PC Express card is standardized enough that it is portable between different versions of Windows. I am still restoring a backup onto the array, will leave another comment if I run into any "issues", but so far it is more compatible than I expected it to be. I am mightily impressed - and this card is blisteringly fast, to boot, faster than the Sabrent PCI card. The SIIG adapter is able to handle two drives separately, as well, and need not be used under RAID. I am also getting the impression that both the SIIG and the Sabrent (which comes without firmware loaded, by the way) are able to recognize drive 0 (primary, for the purpose of this review) and drive 1 regardless of which port they are attached to. That is very good news in that it is generally very easy to mess up a striped array - one table error, and your data is unrecoverable.

Click here for more details and discount information...