I've used this IDE RAID contoller in a number of systems, and it's a good product; it works ok.

But... Adaptec doesn't make a 64-bit Windows driver available.

If you're considering this product, I'd recommend the Highpoint RocketRAID instead. The products are nearly identical, but Highpoint provides a 64-bit Windows driver on it's web site, and the Highpoint product is cheaper if you shop around.

Neither company provides much in the way of tech support.

This is an easy to use all-in-one kit with cables and everything included. The concept is simple (once you understand RAID) but the problem is compatabilty.

In my case, despite a very straightforward layout on my part (and my updating the firmware on the 1200A), I wasn't able to get my Pentium 4 system (with a 3-ish year old chipset -- not too new or too old) to boot from the RAID. The hardware was working just fine and I could see the RAIDed drive-set from Windows, and I could boot off the individual disks after breaking the RAID-set, but no actual boot from the RAIDed drives. Since my main goal was redundancy for the boot disk, I've since disposed of the 1200A card.

I've worked with all manner of RAID technology (from low-end software RAID on linux to high-end EMC hardware SAN units) and I also looked over the Adaptec Support website thoroughly as well as contacted tech support, but couldn't get the product to work. So while the product is easily usable, it may not work with your hardware.

I bought one of these, the big problem is once you install
it,it takes over you boot order, you can only boot from hard drives that are connected to the Adaptor. You can't change the boot order, to boot from a floppy or a CD first, and you will no longer be able to boot from a hard drive that is not connected to the adapator.

Thanks for the instructive review Bababooey!

I just wanted to add some things if you are doing RAID 1 using driver 1.3:

* Shut down the machine and plug the new, XP drive into the Adaptec card, channel #1. NOTE: I plugged in BOTH of my seagate drives. (I purchased the same drives Bababooey purchased - you can't beat the 5 year warranty and performance). For my install, I couldn't boot until I setup an Array in the Array utility that comes up when you reboot. Seems like this step is missing from Bababooey's desc.

* Restart the machine and enter the BIOS ... set the Primary Master IDE Channel to "None"/"Off" and bring up XP (note: leave Secondary IDE settings alone because the CD and DVD drives are on these). The OS should now recognize the hardware as an Adaptec 1200a (instead of the generic Mass Storage device). Install the Adaptec GUI software from the CD. NOTE: My BIOS did this automatically.

* Shut down the machine and plug the second hard drive into the Adaptec card, channel #2. NOTE: again, I did this in step 1.

* Restart the machine and enter the BIOS ... set the Primary Slave IDE Channel to "None"/"Off" and bring up XP (note: leave Secondary IDE settings alone because the CD and DVD drives are on these). NOTE: Did not need this step, my BIOS updated automatically.

* Open the Adaptec GUI (there should be a system tray icon per GUI install) and configure for RAID1 per instructions. Mirroring my 160GB drives took ~2.5 hours. NOTE: I did this from the Array utility that came up when i reboot. If you try to do this with only 1 HD on channel 1, it will say, "you suck, there are not enough drives to continue" Why? Because you need both installed before you can continue. Then I chose CREATE and DUPLICATE, and the rest was the defaults. And now it works great!

This card is pretty much a POS, documentation stinks, support nil and does not work with XP. I know part of the problem is the braindead way Windows does drivers, but you would think that Adaptec would have reasonable support and documentation for this OS. If you enjoy seeing Blue Screens of death, this is the product for you.