ARC-1880ix vs ARC-1680IX

[dizzy1]

My current setup is an ARC-1222 and I need more sas ports. From what I have read, the ARC-1222 does not support expanders. I have various hard drives ranging from WD20EARS to 5K3000 Deskstar to 7200.12 seagate drives. My questions are:

1. What is the advantage of the ARC-1880ix vs ARC-1680IX (apart from the ARC-1880ix having 6gbs speed)?
2. Do both cards support expanders?
3. Will the ARC-1680IX have better hard drive compatibility ARC-1880ix due to the IOP348 chip?
4. How would I go about moving the raid array across cards (If it is possible)?

Thank you.

 

[houkouonchi]

My current setup is an ARC-1222 and I need more sas ports. From what I have read, the ARC-1222 does not support expanders. I have various hard drives ranging from WD20EARS to 5K3000 Deskstar to 7200.12 seagate drives. My questions are:

1. What is the advantage of the ARC-1880ix vs ARC-1680IX (apart from the ARC-1880ix having 6gbs speed)?
2. Do both cards support expanders?
3. Will the ARC-1680IX have better hard drive compatibility ARC-1880ix due to the IOP348 chip?
4. How would I go about moving the raid array across cards (If it is possible)?

Thank you.

1. The ARC-1880ix will give significantly faster rebuilds and has a significantly higher maximum read/write speed in say raid6. Actually since the ARC-1882 just came out I would probably go with that as its even faster.
2. Yes
3. Actually the opposite. I am pretty sure the ARC-1880ix has better compatability IMHO.
4. You can just move the drive to the new controller or to a SAS expander hooked up to the controller and it should work no problem. I have replaced tons of ARC-1222's at work with ARC-1880's without a single problem. Same with the ARC-1882. Pretty much all areca controllers are backwards compatible with arrays created from older models.