The Iwill SIDE-RAID66 was also easy to setup and install –although it is a little too easy, giving up any tweaking ability. It supports RAID 1, 0, 1/0, but doesn’t support 4 disks in a single RAID 0 configuration – this is somewhat of a nuissance since you'll have be forced to live with two smaller partitions rather than a single, larger partition. However, this isn’t a big problem and could even be considered a benefit if you want to, say, Ghost from one drive to another for backups. Performance scores from the Iwill card were very good and just fall a hair short of being the top performer in the roundup. Interestingly, Iwill will be releasing a new BIOS that should reduce the CPU overhead from the HighPoint chip, which may translate to some real life performance increases. We'll definitely take a look again at this card once the new BIOS is made available, since it could well give the Promise card even stiffer competition at that point. The RAID66 is one of cheapest cards in the roundup, with an actual listed MSRP of only $99 [ Which means it should be cheaper on the street, but we haven't seen just how much cheaper - Editor ]! There is also the external drive connection that’s worth mentioning. Even though there wasn’t any purpose in our lab for this connector, it might prove it’s worth if Iwill ever decides to develop an external drive to take advantage external hot swapping, which the card supports. The warranty of the Iwill card is also the best in the roundup, 5 years! It’s supported In Windows 98, NT, and 2000. All in all, the card is a great performer and great value for the money.
We're now left with the Promise FastTrack66 - It’s simple to install and configure, and provides a moderate level of tweaking in the BIOS. It supports RAID 0, 1, and 1/0. And Performance? Very solid, with average benchmarks scores consistently higher than either the Iwill or AMI card. The average retail price tag is $125 though, and for us this was fair when you consider the performance and included utilities [ note however, that we have seen prices as low as $99 online - Editor ]. This card is also hot-swap ready. The warranty, curiously enough, is the most disapointing in the roundup, being only 2 years - and that is somewhat surprising because Promise makes some very solid products. This card, too, is supported under Windows 98, NT, 2000, and DOS.
forums
send article 
hardware newsletter 
article comments
Digg this!
del.icio.us