prices of ATA RAID cards

Does anyone know if the large price spread of
ATA RAID cards is justified? I've seen Promise
cards going for $98 and SIIG cards going for $28
and other cards for prices in between. Is there any
real difference in quality or features of these cards
(assuming 2 channels and a maximum of 4 HDs)?
Do you have any favorites to report?

*TimDaniels*

On Wed, 10 Mar 2004 22:24:27 -0800, "Timothy Daniels"
wrote:

Does anyone know if the large price spread of
ATA RAID cards is justified? I've seen Promise
cards going for $98 and SIIG cards going for $28
and other cards for prices in between. Is there any
real difference in quality or features of these cards
(assuming 2 channels and a maximum of 4 HDs)?
Do you have any favorites to report?

*TimDaniels*

Check on Ebay - I tend to be down on them since there are so many
ripoffs and generally bad deals many times - prices tend to be low and
go really high by the time the auction but I did notice really good
prices on add on controller cards.

I got a good deal on SATA adaptors . They worked as claimed and they
were about 50% off the price , actually more since the shipping was
less on Ebay since they will send through USPS than UPS / FEDEX which
tends to be outrageous where I am.

Ive seen some very popular Silicon Image Raid cards and Promise cards
and other mainstream brand cards for cheap.

On Wed, 10 Mar 2004 22:24:27 -0800, "Timothy Daniels"
wrote:

Does anyone know if the large price spread of
ATA RAID cards is justified? I've seen Promise
cards going for $98 and SIIG cards going for $28
and other cards for prices in between. Is there any
real difference in quality or features of these cards
(assuming 2 channels and a maximum of 4 HDs)?
Do you have any favorites to report?

*TimDaniels*

Most often I hear that the highpoint cards are easier to set up. If
you'll settle for ATA100 instead of ATA133 then this might be a good buy:
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...115-001&depa=0

Google could probably find some benchmarks... offhand I vaguely recall
that the SIIG cards were slower at "something" and the Highpoints had
lower CPU utilization... comparing only these sub-$100 soft-RAID cards.

As to "justified", I doubt it can be justified to charge so much more than
the SIIG for the Promise or Highpoint, but then again the SIIG has a crude
text-based configuration too (yet still usable), possible a few other
drawbacks but I don't remember any at the moment. I'd probably get the
Highpoint if I were buying today but I already have a couple motherboards
running drives off the Promise ATA133 (lite) that're modified to be
Promise (regular) RAID and they work fine too. However at least the
Promise RAID cards don't support ATAPI devices. I don't recall whether
the others do or not but I thought the SIIG did. I also have a system
with one of the SIIG cards but I so rarely use it I don't even have a good
feel for how fast it is, and different drives are in use on it so I can't
directly compare it's performance.

Other features for more $, around $100, would be 4 channels, RAID 5, 10.

Also I don't recall if/when the ATA100 cards started supporting 48bit LBA,
it could be that you'd need to update the bios on an old card but that's
not difficult. For only a couple of RAIDed drives and a single spare
there isn't a good reason to spend a lot more for ATA133... each channel
supports 100MB/s so given the details you've provided, only a 2-drive
array, it's not going to be a significant performance difference using an
ATA100 card.

Anything other than Promise and Highpoint is based on a SiI chip costing less
than $10.

If you look at Promise prices, you see the RAID 0/1 cards going for twice the
non-RAID cards. The hardware is identical, they are charging for a software
feature. Everyone else gives you free RAID.

"Timothy Daniels" wrote in message
...
Does anyone know if the large price spread of
ATA RAID cards is justified? I've seen Promise
cards going for $98 and SIIG cards going for $28
and other cards for prices in between. Is there any
real difference in quality or features of these cards
(assuming 2 channels and a maximum of 4 HDs)?
Do you have any favorites to report?

"Timothy Daniels" wrote in message ...
Does anyone know if the large price spread of
ATA RAID cards is justified? I've seen Promise
cards going for $98 and SIIG cards going for $28
and other cards for prices in between.

Usually the difference is in the features.
Remember that the first Promise Fasttrak controllers were just
Ultra cards but with with a different bios. The component cost
was exactly the same but the Fasttraks were fastly more expensive.

The difference is in the supporting bios/software development cost.

Is there any real difference in quality or features of these cards
(assuming 2 channels and a maximum of 4 HDs)?
Do you have any favorites to report?

*TimDaniels*

"kony" wrote in message ...
On Wed, 10 Mar 2004 22:24:27 -0800, "Timothy Daniels"
wrote:

Does anyone know if the large price spread of
ATA RAID cards is justified? I've seen Promise
cards going for $98 and SIIG cards going for $28
and other cards for prices in between. Is there any
real difference in quality or features of these cards
(assuming 2 channels and a maximum of 4 HDs)?
Do you have any favorites to report?

*TimDaniels*

Most often I hear that the highpoint cards are easier to set up. If
you'll settle for ATA100 instead of ATA133 then this might be a good buy:
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...115-001&depa=0

Google could probably find some benchmarks... offhand I vaguely recall
that the SIIG cards were slower at "something" and the Highpoints had
lower CPU utilization... comparing only these sub-$100 soft-RAID cards.

As to "justified", I doubt it can be justified to charge so much more than
the SIIG for the Promise or Highpoint, but then again the SIIG has a crude
text-based configuration too (yet still usable), possible a few other
drawbacks but I don't remember any at the moment. I'd probably get the
Highpoint if I were buying today but I already have a couple motherboards
running drives off the Promise ATA133 (lite) that're modified to be
Promise (regular) RAID and they work fine too. However at least the
Promise RAID cards don't support ATAPI devices. I don't recall whether
the others do or not but I thought the SIIG did. I also have a system
with one of the SIIG cards but I so rarely use it I don't even have a good
feel for how fast it is, and different drives are in use on it so I can't
directly compare it's performance.

Other features for more $, around $100, would be 4 channels, RAID 5, 10.

Also I don't recall if/when the ATA100 cards started supporting 48bit LBA,
it could be that you'd need to update the bios on an old card but that's
not difficult. For only a couple of RAIDed drives and a single spare
there isn't a good reason to spend a lot more for ATA133... each channel
supports 100MB/s so given the details you've provided, only a 2-drive
array, it's not going to be a significant performance difference using an
ATA100 card.

And both will be limited to ~120 MB/s on your average standard desktop MoBo.

"Eric Gisin" wrote:
Anything other than Promise and Highpoint is based on
a SiI chip costing less than $10.


What chip does Promise and Highpoint use?


If you look at Promise prices, you see the RAID 0/1 cards
going for twice the non-RAID cards. The hardware is identical,
they are charging for a software feature. Everyone else gives
you free RAID.


Is there a measurable superiority of Promise's RAID software
over that of other companies?

*TimDaniels*

"kony" wrote:
...the SIIG has a crude text-based configuration too (yet still usable)

Do the others have GUI interfaces?

*TimDaniels*

The Rocket 133S is the one without BIOS, which saves a few bux. You cannot
boot from it or see drives in DOS. The driver would initialize devices
instead. It is ideal for CD/DVD devices.

"Mark M" wrote in message
...

Why do some controller cards have built-in BIOS support and others
do not?

For example, Highpoint has these (non-RAID) P-ATA models:

http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA/atacard.htm

On that page, the Rocket 133S differs from the Rocker 133SB only in
that one has built-in BIOS support and the other one does not.

To take a guess, does this mean that one has an *upgradeable* BIOS
whereas the other has a fixed BIOS?

So maybe the one with the built-in BIOS support has the
disadvantage of requiring the user to do some procedure which links
its BIOS to the motherboard's BIOS. OTOH perhaps the advantange of
this approach is that the controller card's BIOS could be updated.

On balance, which is the best type of card for a home user (me) who
just wants to attach more P-ATA devices to his PC?

"Eric Gisin" wrote in message
The Rocket 133S is the one without BIOS, which saves a few bux. You cannot
boot from it or see drives in DOS. The driver would initialize devices
instead.

It is ideal for CD/DVD devices.

IF they support that now.
Not so long ago they still hadn't implemented the ATAPI command set.


"Mark M" wrote in message ...

Why do some controller cards have built-in BIOS support and others
do not?

For example, Highpoint has these (non-RAID) P-ATA models:

http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA/atacard.htm

On that page, the Rocket 133S differs from the Rocker 133SB only in
that one has built-in BIOS support and the other one does not.

To take a guess, does this mean that one has an *upgradeable* BIOS
whereas the other has a fixed BIOS?

So maybe the one with the built-in BIOS support has the
disadvantage of requiring the user to do some procedure which links
its BIOS to the motherboard's BIOS. OTOH perhaps the advantange of
this approach is that the controller card's BIOS could be updated.

On balance, which is the best type of card for a home user (me) who
just wants to attach more P-ATA devices to his PC?