Ah the weird and wonderful world of Ali Express and what is the function of this card?

[Radium_Angel]

I'm referring to this card:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000747949221.html?spm=a2g0o.home.15002.229.650c2145lM8uHS&gps-id=pcJustForYou&scm=1007.13562.168240.0&scm_id=1007.13562.168240.0&scm-url=1007.13562.168240.0&pvid=70048899-0e17-4e52-bee6-2007d9cdd555&_t=gps-id:pcJustForYou,scm-url:1007.13562.168240.0,pvid:70048899-0e17-4e52-bee6-2007d9cdd555,tpp_buckets:668%230%23131923%2334_668%230%23131923%2334_668%23888%233325%239_668%23888%233325%239_668%232846%238116%232002_668%232717%237565%23776__668%233374%2315176%23600_668%232846%238116%232002_668%232717%237565%23776_668%233164%239976%23874_668%233374%2315176%23600

 

In my very limited experience with AE, sellers throw as many keywords in their description as will fit, so what they claim they are selling is sometimes difficult to fully grasp (in addition to the language barrier)

Can anyone shed some light on the purpose of this card?

[minibois]

To me it looks like two 2.5" SATA drives can be installed on that card, judging by the port + screw holes.
Apparently the card supports RAID 0 and RAID 1, plus something called HyperDuo

 

FYI: with Aliexpress/eBay/Amazon/etc. links you can remove everything after the '?' for a much smaller link.

That would turn the link from what you have to this: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000747949221.html

[Moonzy]

It looks like a card that lets you fit in two 2.5 inch drives and raid them

[Freakwise]

Some people already said it and I agree with them but it's actually pretty neat imho, especially if you're  "fill all the pcie slot" type of guy, although this could be impractical for a lot of people 

 

 

 

[Radium_Angel]

@minibois

@Moonzy

@Liam danu

 

Thank you, ok so it RAIDs two sata SSDs.

Have you seen (if such a thing exists) a PCIe card that allows two sata SSDs to run independently of each other? Because that's kind of what I was looking for

[Moonzy]

9 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

@minibois

@Moonzy

@Liam danu

 

Thank you, ok so it RAIDs two sata SSDs.

Have you seen (if such a thing exists) a PCIe card that allows two sata SSDs to run independently of each other? Because that's kind of what I was looking for

Not too familiar, but I'm pretty sure there are cards that adds more sata ports and can control the drivers individually, not necessarily mounted on the card itself though

 

Maybe @Windows7gemight know, since it's storage related

[Radium_Angel]

2 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

sata ports and can control the drivers individually, not necessarily mounted on the card

Yeah I have seen those, but I"m looking to reduce the cabling on a proposed system, and was hoping to mount them on the card (thus eliminating the cables) but thank you for the help and we'll see what Windows7ge has to say.

 

Cheers!

[Freakwise]

14 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

@minibois

@Moonzy

@Liam danu

 

Thank you, ok so it RAIDs two sata SSDs.

Have you seen (if such a thing exists) a PCIe card that allows two sata SSDs to run independently of each other? Because that's kind of what I was looking for

It's called hba or host bus adapter if you didn't already know, and if description is anything to go by the card you listed is pretty much hba, so you can run the sata drive individually using that, i also found one on Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/Sedna-Express-Extended-Connector-Included/dp/B07L5SPWNV  which is basically same but hey it's nice to have options right?, Anyway I'm just saying dedicated raid card is rare now days, now I'm not saying they're didn't exist or whatever it just that with hba you have so much flexibility and it's cheaper

 

[Radium_Angel]

4 minutes ago, Liam danu said:

It's called hba or host bus adapter if you didn't already know, and if description is anything to go by the card you listed is pretty much hba, so you can run the sata drive individually using that, i also found one on Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/Sedna-Express-Extended-Connector-Included/dp/B07L5SPWNV  which is basically same but hey it's nice to have options right?, Anyway I'm just saying dedicated raid card is rare now days, now I'm not saying they're didn't exist or whatever it just that with hba you have so much flexibility and it's cheaper

 

Thank you kindly, I'm under the weather right now so my brain power is highly suspect, appreciate the link!

[Windows7ge]

3 hours ago, Moonzy said:

Not too familiar, but I'm pretty sure there are cards that adds more sata ports and can control the drivers individually, not necessarily mounted on the card itself though

 

Maybe @Windows7gemight know, since it's storage related

It appears to use a Marvell 88SE9230 SATA Controller. Marvell is a popular manufacturer of 3rd party SATA controllers you can commonly find on budget motherboards when the chipset/PCH can't handle all the ports for one reason or another.

 

According to the datasheet the Marvell 88SE9230 specifically supports both Simple RAID (0/1/10) and HBA (or Host Bus Adapter) mode where you can leave it up to your hosting software to do what it will with the individual drives.

 

I would not trust this card for any production environment. Something to play and experiment with though sure. I can see various applications in servers where PCI_e mounted 2.5" SSDs would be very convenient.