Areca 1880

[SteveRo]

Looking at the pcmv scores that CT has been pulling down with ancient vertex gen 1s and 920 (no 6 core nor improved instruction set) -
It looks like the 1880 with 4GB cache just screams with whatever you attach it to.
It might be fun to try 5xR0 of inexpensive SSDs, maybe 5x small SF drives or even the ancient x25-v 40s.

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Ha ha, finally got a tracking number from Areca! I should be seeing an 1880ix-12 soon. The tracking says it was shipped at 5pm yesterday in Taiwan but should be delivered... ... ...today before 10:30am? Well that's clearly incorrect. Changing the timezone view to by destination shows that it was picked up today at 6pm my time (?), in transit as of 9:30pm (?), and will be delivered tomorrow morning. That's still bizarre.

Anyway. Here's a fun bit about this particular card I will be receiving: it's a pre-final R&D card featuring a wire jump on the board itself and with no BBU support. Normally that might not be something to get excited about, but comparing the pre-final R&D copy with a final one might give us some insights about the process the card went through and how much consideration the engineers put into it (eg. was the wire soldered properly and tight to the board). I am told that I may/may not get to see a production sample as well once their spare bin is replenished, and until then comparisons will probably have to be made between my photos and someone else's.


Now I really need to give a hard think about what I'm going to use for drives in this thing. Do I pull the trigger on some C300's or wait for the new products due out this fall? With the lifetime this controller will probably see in the market I don't think waiting would necessarily be the worst idea, but sooner means I can have fun sooner. Hmmm. I really need to get in with someone who makes SSD's now.