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The bundled PCIe card is worthless. Enclosure is nice tho. Spend the money and get a good PCIe eSATA card and you're in business.

#1 - What you meant to say was that running RAID on any card that costs less that $700 is worthless.

The reviews at the Egg are hysterical. All the silly n00bs that think they are cool setting up a RAID5 software array.

Remember these key facts:
RAID5/6 is not a backup. It is designed to maximize uptime.
Software RAID is slow, especially writing.
Real hardware RAID5/6 costs serious money.
Arrays are power hungry, noisy, and generate lots of heat.
Again, RAID5/6 is not a backup.

If you are worried about your data, think about fires and burglars too. Offsite is the only way to go. If you are just a gamer might I recommend two WD640 black drives in RAID0 and run a WHS box that backs it up. Throwing parity calculations into the mix is stupid unless you want to drop some serious cash on a nice Adaptec controller.

#2, explain how RAID 0 makes sense with WHS. I'm all for WHS, great OS all the way, but wouldn't you be using ethernet for it? What's the point of RAID 0 then? This may be eSATA to the WHS box, but it's ethernet to rest of the network.

Pdok: mcnabney is recommending two different computers: a high performance gaming computer that runs two drives in raid 0 and a separate computer running windows home server to easily back up the gaming computer's files.

raid 0 (striping) is used for performance, while whs on a separate computer is used for backup.

my home server uses raid 1 (mirroring) for uptime and automated daily full/differential/incremental backups copied to my desktop (and burned to DVD monthly) for user error.

#4, yeah, I get it now, though there's no still reason for a WHS box just for something you can do with Win 7 and an external drive.

Performance is decent as JBOD, but performance suffers using the software RAID. Supposedly linux RAID5 works okay.

Sans Digital makes an identical enclosure with card. They also now sell a version with hardware RAID, TowerRaid TR5UT. $349 on newegg. Tempting if it works as advertised.

#2's info is past its prime. Parity calculations are a trivial thing for a modern PC/modern performance. Some said the same silly things about software modems, then with those too the day came when you'd never notice the CPU cycles they used, particularly if what you're setting up is not a corporate server (if it's a business expense you need not be shopping for deals on generic house-brand equipment) so you probably have plenty of spare CPU cycles.

5 drive arrays are NOT particularly power hungry, noisy, nor do they generate all that much heat. For example any better than midrange video card exceeds all of the above.

In short, the pseudo-knowledge #2 claims seems to imply he has trouble doing what others do easily. It is not rocket science to RAID a few hard drives, lol. Tweaking everything possible to attain maximum performance on the other hand, IS an art but let's face it, nobody looking at this product was thinking they'll throw hundreds to thousands of dollars more at the problem to reach highest possible performance. There is plenty of room in the market for alternatives to fit different budgets.

I used to have a server in my closet with a software raid 5 array. Performance was ok for what I needed (backup and media serving at home) but the whole system was hot and loud. It wasn't JUST the 4 drives, but also the P4 cpu and probably some other inefficiencies. It sucked a ton of power and just wasn't worth it. I got rid of all that hardware for a tiny Atom 330-based WHS box with a single WD Green drive. Raid was not necessary because the data also exists on the machines being backed up. Runs quiet and cool, and even a little faster than the old setup.
I still use (hardware) raid at work where uptime is critical but for home it was overkill and I'm glad I ditched it.