Well it had to happen, FastTrack66 vs SIDE RAID66. Which is better? Well that is a tough question to answer. Both have their strengths and weaknesses. The FastTrack66 is faster by a very small margin, however the Iwill card is also $50 cheaper. The Promise card has a great manual that covers everything about the card. The Iwill manual is compact, simple, and to the point. The Promise card has a better connector layout in my opinion, but the Iwill cad has a third connection for an external drive. With the performance on both cards being pretty much the same, the major determinant here is price and features. One thing the Iwill card doesn't support but the Promise card does is the ability to create a JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Drives) configuration, where the total capacity is equal to the sum of all hard drives. There is no performance gain in that configuration but just makes it convenient to treat many drives as one.

The Promise card also has the ability to choose the striping size, while you are stuck with default size with the Iwill card. It's a tough call. With the old scores, the Promise card clearly was the winner. The new scores tell a different story. I guess it depends on the application of the card. Iwill stresses that their card is very stable. My experience with both cards is that they are both stable even with my overclocked Celerons. There is no clear winner between the two, but I feel that the Iwill card with it's lower price beats out the Promise solution. You can find the Promise card for around $100 but why scour the net when Iwill is already at $99.

So what's the bottom line? I made a terrible mistake with the initial testing of the card. It appears that it performs at the same level as the Promise card, even better in some areas. What can I say, it's fast and affordable, even more so than the Promise card. You get high speed performance, data redundancy, and at a low price too. What more can you ask for? There are some minor flaws with the card but nothing warranting a reduction in rating. So my FINAL conclusion with this card is that it is the best IDE RAID solution for your money. I give it a score of 10/10.

10/10 SystemLogistics