Quote Originally Posted by IanB View Post
What we are disagreeing on is the word "support". Having a bug in the firmware doesn't mean drives don't "support" some controllers. It means the drives had a bug, that will affect multiple controller hosts.

"Support" implies special firmware code or handling for specific hardware. In your Areca example that's clearly what they fixed to allow booting from SSDs. So you proved my point, that controllers need to support specific drives, not the other way around.

Since the 9010 series has a SATA1 compatability mode, I think we can assume that ACARD are interested in making the thing as widely compatible as possible, otherwise they wouldn't be getting that many sales of what is already a niche product...
The WD 640s had issues. This ACARD may have issues. The new Arecas had issues with some drives, just like they may have with these. My point is, just because these things are sata means squat. While I certainly appreciate a good argument degenerating into semantics, in this case it's pointless. All that matters is that major controllers will play well with it. Problems could exist on either the controller or the ACARD side. That was the only point. Without results we don't know.

You earlier said:
Quote Originally Posted by IanB View Post
The SATA standard should be plug and play, as long as the controller and drive speak the same dialect there shouldn't ever be any incompatability.
As though as long as ACARD is SATA it will be problem free. In reality that's simply not the case. "Shouldn't ever be any incompatibility" is a pretty absolute statement considering I have seen many incompatibilities on many different drives between many different controllers.