eSata / Sata / IDE PCI RAID Controller Card VIA VT6421A Chip Set
- 1 eSata ports + 2 Sata Port + 1 IDE Port, PCI Interface. Not bootable.
- SATA port trans speed can up to 1.5G (150Mbps). Supports Windows 98 SE, Me, 2000, XP, Vista
- eSata port and left upper SATA port is shared, control by onboard jumper (Instruction is on CD).
- Complies with Serial ATA specification Revision 1.0, not for SATA Version 2.
- Ultra ATA-133 IDE interface Extension to Ultra DMA-133 interface for up to 133MB/s transfer rate.
2 identical sata port can support Level 0, RAID Level 1. In Bulk pack, no retail box.
VIA VT6421 Chipset.
Compatibility: Works for Windows 98 SE, Me, 2000, XP, Vista
Rating: 
(out of 5 reviews)
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Review by Andrew Moe for eSata / Sata / IDE PCI RAID Controller Card VIA VT6421A Chip Set
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There are a lot of negative reviews about this product out there, and yes, most of their gripes are valid. This card won’t support 300G transfers, and it won’t be detected before booting the OS, so you can’t use it for a system drive. But it does everything it promises: supplies you with a SATA RAID controller, and even an extra IDE bus.
The long and the short of it is – a hard drive can barely keep up with the 150G transfer rate of the protocol version this uses, so unless you’re using solid state storage, that gripe doesn’t count. If you just want to add more storage to your existing computer, or just want to add SATA to a non-SATA computer, this works like a charm. Setup was easy, it worked right out of the box. I highly recommend it.
Some background on me – I have two electrical engineering degrees, and have worked in IT off and for the last 20 years. In my opinion, this is a good product for the money.
Review by Edmund Galicki Jr. for eSata / Sata / IDE PCI RAID Controller Card VIA VT6421A Chip Set
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SATA card works in XEON XP system – after boot – I was hoping it would work off BIOS so I could Ghost system to SATA instead of problematic IDE. It works well after boot using a driver.
Review by goofydelin for eSata / Sata / IDE PCI RAID Controller Card VIA VT6421A Chip Set
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My cheap SATA card I got from eBay died, so I decided to buy another one with some assurance (Amazon reviews). Put the card in, Ubuntu 8.0.4 Server recognized it fine. Hookup my Seagate 1.5TB and it’s working fine so far. I didn’t test speed or anything, I just know I was able to read/write to that the 1.5TB drive w/ this SATA and so far it’s working fine (~1 month). I’ll update if this card ever give me trouble.
Review by KJ for eSata / Sata / IDE PCI RAID Controller Card VIA VT6421A Chip Set
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Bought this card specifically for doing system backups to an external hard drive. I can’t attest to how well the internal SATA or IDE ports work. Installation went OK, Win7 correctly identified it and automatically downloaded drivers for it from Windows update. So I thought “Hey great, no need to fool with the mini CD driver disk labeled SUTUP SOFTWARE (sic)”. I was averaging about 25-30 Mb per second transfers on the external hard drive via USB 2.0, and expected to multiply that by at least 2-3 times. But sadly, this card’s eSATA port would jump off the starting block at about 75 Mb per second, then very quickly slow down to 50, then 25 then 10 and within 30 seconds transfer rates were down to 2-3 Mb per second. I benchmarked the drive using this card’s eSATA port with no less than 6 different hard drive benchmark utilities, and every single one of them timed out (program not responding), due to bottlenecked inability to access and test the drive. I thought maybe the Win7 obtained driver was a possible culprit so I used the SUTUP SOFTWARE (sic) mini CD and it had NO DRIVERS for OS newer than XP on it, and all it did was install a startup RAID Tool that I didn’t want or need and had trouble getting rid of (wouldn’t uninstall through Control Panel – had to do it the brute force way). Then I searched the web and found a Vista driver for it that I also tried – it had a newer date by one month than the Win7 driver, but it was much worse – the whole OS bogged down with it in use and it took almost FIVE MINUTES for the external hard drive to even be recognized. I re-installed the original Win7 drivers and did one last eval on it. No dice. Ten minutes after commanding a 4 Gb file to be copied to the external drive, less than 2 Gb was transferred and the transfer rate was down to 2 Mb per second. What was I thinking expecting more from a $17 card? Didn’t work for me.
Review by Scott Kessler for eSata / Sata / IDE PCI RAID Controller Card VIA VT6421A Chip Set
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I have this card installed on an E-machine running XP for the past week, as a RAID-1 mirror configuration. It is controlling two W.D. 640GB SATA drives and has eased my mind about loosing important data! with this inexpensive investment (one raid card, cables, power adapter and two sata drives) I can back up my three machines and also store my CCTV video. set up was easy, if you buy OEM drives make sure you have the necessary hard drive jumpers to slow down the hard drives (1.5gb transfer rate instead of the 3gb they run at) western digital has literature to show the jumper settings. I had the jumpers and i bought everything else hear at Amazon. i shopped around and I found the parts at amozon were the best price and value other sites were crooked!