Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
I like Adaptec for price/performance, and good Linux overall compatibility (including CentOS). Just don't order those "fell off the truck" Taiwan specials that are clearly Adaptec chipsets, but have actually had the numbers filed off.
Adaptec is proud of their "HostRAID" technology that has a spotty record with Linux compatibility. The manufacturer's descriptions have led people to mistakenly think they bought a hardware RAID card when in fact the RAID functions are implemented in software. This approach has been dubbed "fake RAID". It's not clear to me that this is a win compared to using the kernel's software RAID features.
http://www.brentnorris.net/blog/archives/158 tells the sorry tale of a company whose products used to be a safe bet. The comments tend to confirm the sad state of affairs.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Fakeraid#Firmware.2Fdriver-ba... covers fake RAID.