( 2 reviews )
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Posted: Jun 8 2009
So I did a lot of research on PCIe RAID cards, and decided this card was a contender. In actual application, what you find out is that they use the WHOLE DISK for whatever RAID type you select. Arcane, and also an inexcusable thing to leave out of all documentation. So if you are like me, perhaps you do not necessarily want to commit all of your physical disk space to the overhead of a particular RAID type. Instead, you want to mix it up. You want to have a small 500 GB RAID 10 array for that really important data, and another RAID 0 Array for the data that needs to be super fast. You will not be able to do that with a 3WARE controller. Better look elsewhere. I found it with Adaptec's competing product. the 5405. OH, and Adaptec uses industry standard terms, where 3Ware feels the need to make up new terms. Their installer disk throws an error immediately on a 64 bit platform. Easy enough to deal with, but shows a lack of attention to the market. They're stuck in the 300GB disk days. Recommend you look elsewhere.
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Posted: Apr 27 2009
Check the SKU, for me, this was the retail SKU, so it comes with the SATA breakout cables. This is IMPORTANT because it is a proprietary cable that costs extra. The card and software seem reliable. The thing to know is that Hardware RAID may be more sensitive than software raid. Any flaky hard drives, such as those Seagate 7200.11 drives will cause your array to degrade. If 2 drop out at the same time, then you are in trouble. The card has some RAID migration utilities, it works very well. Also, you want to enable the write cache. I made it safe by buying an external UPS, otherwise, you need to buy the internal battery. Both are around the same price so why not protect the whole PC. With the write cache enabled, writing to it is very fast until the cache runs out, 64-256 MB? There is an open bug with the firmware as of this writing 4/26/2009. A timed out drive may remain timed-out forever but I'm not sure it is degrade level bug. look it up on the AMCC web site. RAID-6 is NOT available for this card, unfortunately, only on the models with more than 4 ports.
