Hi. I'm thinking of buying two generic SYBA SY-PCI40010 PCI Serial ATA II RAID Controller Cards for my server, though I can't see any listing on unraids Hardware Compatibility listing. Can anyone confirm whether they have this card and it works fine with unraid? Thanks.

Assuming this isnt a late April fools joke? 8 hdds on a PCI bus wont be fast for parity checking.

 

Those cards use SIL3124 which is supported and works. PCI-X SYBA SY-PCX40009 PCI-X SATA II if you have a PCI-X bus would be much better.

 

The SYBA SD-SATA-4P PCI SATA Controller Card uses a SIL3114 and is ten dollars cheaper per card.

 

The same thing on monoprice is again another ten dollars+ cheaper. http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=104&cp_id=10407&cs_id=1040702&p_id=2667&seq=1&format=2.

 

On ebay a SIL3114 card is probably ten bucks shipped with change for a few cables.

 

The advantage of the SIL3124 is that it supports port multipliers (20 drives per card). However it is still sharing a PCI 133MB/s bus.

 

If it was my money, ebay item 140396212826 two off please. Even if your motherboard wont run them at 66Mhz, they are still cracking little cards or a Supermicro sata MV8 in a PCI slot.

Assuming this isnt a late April fools joke? 8 hdds on a PCI bus wont be fast for parity checking.

I've got 11.  It is not as bad as you might think.  Many are smaller disks,250Gig, 400Gig, 500Gig and 750Gig, so it speeds up once it gets past those. Still, they all share the PCI bus.

Hi Kaygee and Joe L. You've both given me assurance to buy this then. Given my limitations with two PCI slots and one PCIe and deciding to use two of these cards, I only do monthly parity checks, by which I've scheduled my rig to do this at 2am of the 2nd day of each month. By the time it has completed its parity check, if it is a weekend, I would be sleeping or this occurred on a weekday, I'll be at work, therefore not requiring it and the parity check could take all day . Thanks.

I've got 11.  It is not as bad as you might think.

 

It's worse than I thought! It's parity generation Joe, but not as we know it.

 

All joking aside, my PCI based test rig performed really well for everything except parity checks and parity generation. Given these performance limitations arent an issue, you'll be fine. I'd still go with a couple of TX4s or a Supermicro PCI-x 8 port board over those SIL3124 based boards.

 

   

It's worse than I thought! It's parity generation Joe, but not as we know it.

Yeah, I know I should upgrade... and I have most all the pieces... just need to assemble it all before SATA drives are replaced by something newer..

 

Joe L.

I'd like to build a rig which had a really great mobo something with a Super Micro mobo, and buy some Super Micro 8 or 16 bit PCIe cards for a ultimate rig, but money is always too tight to mention in my budget and the PCI buses that i have will have to suffice or when i out grow my server, i'll budget for a server with similar spec's like Limetech sells :-). i've already had to change the mobo on my server to avoid the Gigabyte HPA potential problem. thanks.

Ebay tx4's in that case. A pair of preloved tx4's and some change for the cost of a single syba sil3124. ebay item 140396212826.

 

 

So basically their the same card, one is one brand and other is another brand, same spec's and chipset, and throughput should be the same? Hhhmmm... Looks like a great bargain.

 

Ebay tx4's in that case. A pair of preloved tx4's and some change for the cost of a single syba sil3124. ebay item 140396212826.

 

 

My vote is for the TX4 also.  I had two SYBA cards back in the day (don't remember if they were the same you are looking at or not) and both died premature deaths within a few months.  My TX4 has been running strong for over a year.

 

Edit: Looking into it more, here's the SYBA cards I used to have.  I had two of them, and I never used the eSATA ports, just the internal ports.  Like I said, both died within a few months, but if I remember correctly, I suspected some sort of power surge or similar that killed them (they both died simultaneously, and I wasn't using a UPS or properly grounded power strip).

 

Basically, SYBA is fairly cheap/generic, whereas Promise is quality.  You get what you pay for.

Basically, SYBA is fairly cheap/generic,

 

Syba is a newegg brand for a chinese manufacturer. You get the same ebay cards but in a retail package.

 

Promise is a proper raid card manufacturer. I'd go with preloved quality over new and cheap. Especially when preloved quality is cheaper.

 

The tx4's do work at 66Mhz, a lot of the generic sil cards don't. Tx4's will work in multiples in the same system. Given your working to a budget its a "no brainer".

 

Much appreciated Kaygee for your input and advice. I'll guess I'll be heading to eBay and buy me those Promise cards then Thanks.