This card using SiI 3132 controller to manage the Soft-RAID or as some people name it as Hyprid-RAID which it is in between a hardware-RAID and a fully software RAID. Supported RAID Modes are BIG (Spanning or Concatenation) also know as "Simple" RAID, RAID 0 (Striped Disks), and RAID 1 (Mirrored Disks). Off course such a low cost card is not recommended to use it for RAID0 to gain peformance, but it is good for RAID1 to protect your files or OS. This card support wise Operation Systems refer to the website for more info.

I used this card for RAID1 with two SATA II 2.5" hard drives to install Windows Home Server 2011 operationg system on them. My configuration is:
OS: Windows Home Server 2011
RAID Mode: RAID 1
Hard Drives: Hitachi Travelstar 500GB SATA II 2.5" hard drives.
Motherboard: Zotac H67 Mini-ITX
Cables: the supplied cables will not work in my situation because they gone hit the memory slot in the motherboard, so I got a Left Angle SATA cables without latch to get them fit.

The card came with an old BIOS and CD drivers, so I update the controller BIOS to 7.7.02 version using UpdFlash.exe Utility from Silicon Image website. In addition, I used 64Bit Driver for Windows OS installation 1.5.19.0 downloaed from Silicon Image website. After I installed the OS, I installed a small RAID utility from Silicon Image to monitor my RAID health.

I simulate a hard drive failure situation with this card while the system on by disconnecting one drive, immediatly the RAID utility pop up with a warrning message that one drive is down. Still the system is on fully fucntional, but not protected, so I tried to connect the drive back, but the RAID doesn't recognize it or rebuild it autmatically. Which it is mean, I have to rebuild the RAID1 manually after reboot my computer using RAID Configuation Utiltity, remember you need press Ctlr+S or F4 to access it. It should take around 6 hours based on the calculation to rebuild the RAID, but it dropped when reaching around 25%. After five failure attempts to rebuild the RAID from boot, I used the SATARAID5 (Array Manager) utility in windows from Silicon Image to rebuild the RAID; it took around 16 hours to rebuilt the RAID successfully :)

Other thoughts:
Just becarefull when you update the controller BIOS, you may damage your card if you don't know what you are doing. You can download the utility and proper BIOS bin file from Silicon Image and copy them in a bootable USB drive or CD. At the prompt type
"Updflash rxxx.bin"
(xxx.bin is the BIOS file name, make sure you use the file start with "r" which is the BIOS for RAID controller cards)
for example: Updflash r7702.bin

after that a list of flash memory will appear, choose "PMC Pm39LV010(1Megabit)"; after that BIOS updating will start on, restart the computer after it finish.

The price is so high for Sil 3132 SATA controller if you compare it with other PCI or PCI-e 1x cards, However, it is a good choice if you have a limited expansion cards on your motherboard. The supplied documentation is completed and not for a first time user for a RAID configuation.

Silicon Image website to download the drivers, BIOS, and RAID application utitlity for your OS.
[...]

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Update: I contacted StarTech.com when I faced the driver compatibility issue during OS installation and guess what they reply:
Dear Ayedh,

Thank you for your inquiry! We are sorry to hear about your technical difficulty. Unfortunately our products do not yet have drivers that are compatible with Server 2011.

If you have any further questions, please contact us.

Sincerely,
Jeff Worville
Technical Advisor
StarTech.com Ltd.
Tel: 519 455-9675
Tel: 800 265-1844
Fax: 519-455-9425
UK and European Toll Free: 00 800 7827 8324
UK Fax: 0870 460 5927

LOL, they don't that Windows Home Server 2011 is subversion of Windows Server 2008 R2 with some tweaks to suit home users. Therefore, any Windows Server 2008 R2 drivers should natively work under WHS 2011. I downloaded the latest driver version directly from Silicon Image website. Even though I sent another support request regarding rebuilding RAID problem during boot; no reply yet from Startech.com. Anyhow, forget about any kind of serious support to get from Startech.com.

I gave this card 3 Stars and it missing 2 stars because of:
-High price compared with other PCI & PCI-e RAID cards that using same RAID controller.
-Dropped rebuild RAID under boot.
-Poor support from Startech.com

Appears as: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3132 Serial ATA Raid II Controller (rev 01)

This card works great and I have had no trouble with it at all. It was properly detected and worked from the start. When you turn it your system on, it will prompt for a few seconds to allow you to configure the device. But you do NOT do that. If you are buying a cheap RAID card you NEVER want to use the hardware on the device to manage the RAID. What you do is you make it so all the devices are seen individually, then you create a software RAID in Debian instead with mdadm. You do this so that in case a disk dies or you would ever want to migrate your data over, you do not get slapped with an unknown RAID format. Software RAIDs are slower but the card performs well, and the troughput is still tons faster than the 8 port PCI card.

But if you want hardware RAID, you go for the more expensive grade hardware that dedicated servers go for.

This card together with an 8 port SATA card (IDE), along with the 2 SATA ports on the D2700MUD board, gives me a nice 12 SATA Ports. You just need a giant case to put all the disks in.

Put it into an MSI Wind nettop box, after cutting holes in the case for eSATA ports. The drive cage does press on this card, which bends the motherboard slightly. That's just an issue with my use of this though, not a design flaw of the card. OS is Fedora. My external drive hasn't lost connection yet. External USB kept dropping, probably due to bad power.

Works great in my 2010 iMac.

I am using this card successfully, on the Intel atom mother board, D2700DC.
on a PC-BSD build.
Works great!
Note: I did not use any of the RAID functionality.

Startech 2 port mini pci express card did not work with my unraid server using an intel atom motherboard. Be advise it seem not many people got to work when I look online for help.

my own stupid fault for not seeing the orientation of the sata ports. This was to be installed in a Shuttle SH67H3. the card fits but the ports, even with right angle cables does not fit in case. on paper it is what I wanted