SATA II and SAS RAID CARD ROUNDUP

Conclusion

There are clear winners in this roundup - the Areca family.  Yes, once again, they have reaffirmed they are king of performance.  But is that the end-all of SATA controllers?  Of course not.  Other factors such as quality, post-sales support, technical updates, and reliability are more subjective and can only be determined by a large sample of users over a long period of time.  Also, keep in mind that these tests were performed with 8x SATA-II HDDs, not SAS.  The SAS article is coming up next, featuring some of the same players in this contest...

Here's the breakdown:

The ASR-31605 performed admirably, showing good numbers throughout all the tests.  Product looks to be very well built, and includes cables for easy deployment.  Technical support is top-notch during our testing, and the brand is sure to be around for a long time. 

The Areca trio of ARC-1220, ARC-1261ML, and ARC-1680 were like mobsters, just cutting down everyone in sight, and possibly intimidating others to lower performance.  Surprisingly, the smaller ARC-1220 outperformed its bigger brothers in many tests.  Areca technical support and product updates are the direct opposite - painfully lacking.  Some drivers haven't been updated in a year or so, while released critical management applications just didn't work.  Nevertheless, Areca's overwhelming strength overshadowed these weaknesses.

The two LSI cards showed middle-of-the-road performance.  Numbers were so-so in several places, sluggish in others.  However, intangibles such as company backing, technical support, and software updates are top-notch.  The cards' low-profile and solid build quality are among the best we've seen.

The Promise EX16300 did not exude anything exciting.  Its performance was lackluster, and support for the product was also minimal.  Promise has been around for a long time, but with larger companies producing products in lower price segments, Promise's value proposition needs to change in order to remain competitive.