prices of ATA RAID cards

[Timothy Daniels]

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*

 

[John]

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.

 

[kony]

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/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=16-115-001&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.

 

[Eric Gisin]

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.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

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.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

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/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=16-115-001&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.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

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*

 

[Timothy Daniels]

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

Do the others have GUI interfaces?

*TimDaniels*

 

[Mark M]

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.

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]

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.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

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.

 

[kony]

Do the others have GUI interfaces?

*TimDaniels*

Well, they're all text-based, but graphical in an acii-art sort of way,
menus instead of single lines of text and a prompt. It's not difficult to
config the SIIG though and if that's the only difference you find then
it'd be worth settling for it's less polished interface for a significant
cost savings.

Here's an example of the Highpoint interface,
http://www.hardwaresite.net/hpt370.html

 

[kony]

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 mentioned the differences, though someone adept at modifying a
motherboard bios may be able to append a highpoint bios to their
motherboard bios, enabling the missing boot & driverless support in
DOS/etc.

It's not that one card's bios can be updated but the other can't, in
theory it'd be possible to put an EPROM rather than an EEPROM (a
write-once chip) on a card with bios, but they don't, you can flash update
the bios on any with the chip AFAIK.

The best for typical use would be to go ahead and spend the few extra $ on
a card with the bios. It's quite useful to be able to boot from it or
access without having to load the OS (driver).

 

[Bubba]

Timothy Daniels's log on stardate 11 ožu 2004

Does anyone know if the large price spread of ATA RAID cards is
justified?

ATA RAID card is so _general_ question that it is realy hard to tell.

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?

If you are thinking about standard RAID types (0/1/0+1), that it is all
the same thing, few $ chips and they do their job pretty well.