As you can see by the SiSoft drive benchmark, the system is very fast. The benchmark doesn't really tell the full story however. When you first setup a RAID system, you have to format and re-install Windows. Normally this is a 30 minute procedure. Loading Windows 98 onto the hard drive and installing from there, I was able to get Windows fully installed and running in just 15 minutes! I've never seen Windows installed so fast before.
Loading programs and Quake 3 levels takes less time as well. This faster loading of programs and games was very addicting. Loading up the Quake 3 maps faster gives you the advantage of getting all the good weapons before anyone does. :)
Aside from a few installation and setup problems, I have had no performance related problems with the Iwill SIDE-RAID66. My only gripe was I wished Iwill would have told me the unit doesn't correctly report drives that are bigger than 34 Gigs. It would have saved me a ton of time.
Overall, this is a very good unit and well worth looking into if you want better hard drive performance. With a street price of about $100 it's quite a good value. Keep in mind you will need to add another hard drive to use it. Also keep it mind that it's only as fast and as big as your slowest and smallest drive. If you mix and match say a 7,200 RPM drive and a 5,400 RPM, the system will run at 5,400. Likewise if you mix a 20 Gig hard drive and a 30 Gig hard drive, your final drive size in a RAID 0 setup is 40 Gigs, not 50.
The Goods
Works with external drives
Great performance
Comes with cables
The Bads
Instruction manual not that great
Can't read values for drives over 34 Gigs
Rating: 8.5/10