areca ARC-1222 PCIe x8 SATA / SAS RAID Card

Pros: Really love the product

Cons: Don't forget, you you need JBOD, then you have to set the drives as passthrough.

Other Thoughts: I need two long brackets for this device. I have short ones.
anyone not needing the long brackets please contact me.

Pros: -Great Speed
-Extremely easy to get a RAID 6 array set up (Eight 2TB drives = 11TB of usable storage space)
-For the first 2 years it worked flawlessly, no complaints.

Cons: -Bought the card on 1/24/2011, started noticing strange issues on 1/13/2013. Began with the computer locking up, and once rebooted the RAID card gave an error that it couldn't initialize the firmware. So I unhooked one of the drives and it booted just fine. Put all drives back into the RAID array, rebuilt and the computer would run for 30-45 minutes before locking up again.

At this point I thought it was a problem with one of the HDD's in the RAID array going bad, but the ARC-1222 logs showed nothing. So I began to pull each drive out of the array and run individual diagnostics. One had a bad sector, but that isn't unusual for a 2TB consumer grade drive.

Contacted Tekram to get it swapped out under the 3 year warranty (Call them, DO NOT E-MAIL - I got no response to any of the e-mails I sent to Tekram support, but as soon as I called and asked for an RMA the process went smoothly).

Plugged the new card in and it works great again!

Interestingly enough it would seem that there was simply a faulty batch created and sold ~2 years ago (See other thoughts). According to Areca sales this should no longer be an issue - hope this is true as I want this card to last longer than 2 years!!

Other Thoughts: -I use this in a home media server. It is powered 24/7, and has roughly up to 8 clients connected streaming media during peak usage. No hiccups until the card died.


Doing some Google searching I dug up this bit of knowledge about this card that was sold roughly 2 years ago:

"Hi

This is xxx Sales Manager in Areca.

I feel very sorry about the failure rate of ARC-1212/1222 which caused your big trouble.

The defective rate is from one power mosfet component which we bought from International Rectifier, the biggest supplier in the world. The high defective rate happened from their one production period lot. It would possible happen in one or two years later with some percentage but not happen 100%. We have asked them to submit analysis report but I did not get the report till now. ( = 09/2012 )

The version of 1.2B, 1.3 are without problem, and we have shipped version of 1.2B and 1.3 more than one years. So, it means the problem only happen in the products which sold out around one or two years ago.

The model of ARC-18xx are without problems. The model of ARC-168x series is the same status too, but few qty happened till now.

Best Regards"

Pros: Extremely fast, low failure rates, rock bottom price, apache server built in for management

Cons: The web interface lacks polish as does the on-screen interface. Many advanced features can only be reached from the web interface.

Other Thoughts: We use these all day long in critical environments that are high traffic with databases.

They handle drive failures like a champ, and handle RAID5/6 at speeds fast enough to fully saturate 2 gig nics.

For the price these things cant be beat, dont forget to keep a cold spare on hand in case of failure, I'd hate to wait for an RMA.

Pros: Good While it lasted

Cons: For a lower level enterprise cards died after 18 months in a low usage media server. First indication it was going was drive freezing then the web access for monitoring went out. I expected more out of enterprise level hardware, rest of the server has had no hick-ups and has been on 24/7 for over 18 months.

Pros: This card has the capacity to be controlled via the embedded web server (Ethernet port connected).
You can create boot-able volumes, and has several RAID levels.
High Performance Card, I have seen 400 MB/s transfer rates + with 4 WD caviar black disks in raid 5.
Excellent Customer Support... after 1.5 years the card went bad, but I received a replacement without hesitation from ARECA. did I mentioned EXCELLENT customer support.
Easy to upgrade firmware, works with windows 8 and intel socket 2011 MoBos.

Cons: went bad after 1.5 years.
but it was replaced by ARECA, 3 yr warranty. :)

Other Thoughts: This card can connect with the provided wiring up to 8 Disks, so if you plan to fully use it, you need to plan for a case with enough Disk slots and a nice power supply.

Pros: PCI-X Bus, LP . Works on Nexenta , Solaris etc. Seperate network jack for alerts on the card directly and a web interface make this a big bonus.

Cons: I wanted to use one of the 12 bay RM cases here but it had a backplane and I had to order custom cables the SFF8087 8088 cables , which made it less messy inside but just an FYI.

Pros: Works as designed. Performance is great.
Been using this card for 1 1/2 years in a white-box server, running 2k8 R2 Hyper-V, and as home NAS.
Never had a performance issue, and can saturate 1Gbit network sending/receiving data.

Cons: Initializing takes some time, no quick initialization. Re-activating a RAID set is not intuitive from console/GUI, but read the manual and it's easy to figure out.

Other Thoughts: This is the 2nd card, the 1st one started failing and eventually had no I/O to raid sets. Areca support provided an RMA, and the original card is still in the RMA process.
This card (replacement) saw all the disks & raid sets, imported them without issue, and I was back up and running.

Pros: Ease-of-use
Network Administration
Performance

Cons: Lasted 17 months of continuous use.

Other Thoughts: Ran 24/7 in a home file server with 4x500gig raid10 and 4x1tb raid 6. Consistency checks run periodically on raid 6, but card began locking within 2% of check. Replaced drives but the card continues to lock within 6 hours of use.

Based on the other reviews, there is clearly something wrong with these cards. Will give the RMA process a go.

Pros: Very easy to use. Extremely fast.

Cons: Poor RMA support

Other Thoughts: Failed after continuous server use of ~2 years. Contacted manufacturer for RMA, they said to contact the vendor (Newegg). I tried three times to get an RMA out of Newegg and I kept getting blown off or told to talk to the manufacturer. Never did get a replacement, and now I have a $500 paperweight.

4 Eggs for the product.
0 Eggs for Newegg's failure of customer service.

Pros: Excellent card at a great price for a high quality RAID controller and it supports nearly everything.

Cons: This card doesn't seem to support the Apple RAID utility and is unable to be connected by iPass or Mini-SAS to Mid 2012 Mac Pro's. When I spoke with Apple about this they said it transfers data from the logic or motherboard direct hard drive connection through the PCIe X16 slot to the card, but Areca said this in not supported. An attempt was made to use the card anyway, but it was not obvious how to configure the drives and the instruction manual only explains how to do on a PC. It is for this reason that I have decided to return the card. Especially since Areca didn't give any further explaination in my emails to them.

Other Thoughts: Mac Pro
Mid 2012

Processor 3.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Memory 6 GB 1066 MHz DDR3 ECC
Graphics ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB
Software OS X 10.8 (12A269)