Cavalry CAXB 2TB USB 2.0 / eSATA Black External Hard Drive CAXB3702T3 - Retail

Inexpensive Alternative To NAS Backup Storage

Reviewed By: ITBeast on 3/17/2010

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 day to 1 week

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: This is my 5th Calvary External Device(1st 2TB one however) I've Owned them over a year with no real compliants. This one is replacing a 1TB that went bad (No bad on Calvary, I never un-RAIDed it properly witch caused the drive to be corrupted, luckly the other 3 still work perfectly). Since the NAS I want is still out of my $$$ reach I decided to purchase this instead for only $30 more than I had originally paid for the one that went bad over a year ago. This will backup all my 1.3TB of Data twice a week with about 600GB to spare and when I run out of room (eventually down the road) I'll probably just purchase another one (Unless my dream NAS comes down in price. I have a eSata card currently plugged into my server witch I use for the better performace. Since I have more room on the Drive I will be retiring/repurposing 2 of the working 3 and the other one is currently being used for Shadow Copies Only.

Cons: The only real gripe I have on this product (Witch is not the blue light that annoys everybody else) is the fact that is does not come with a basic form of backup software. In my case it doesn't matter because I use another 3rd party (Handy Backup 6.5.1) but for those who are on real tight budget and can not afford backup software it would be nice if a basic one was offered or provided (Heak even Seagate or Western Digital do that). But I will not dock an Egg since the value is so good.

Other Thoughts: Basically if looking for alot of Storage for not alot of Money look no further, it's only about $10 more without the external drive case.

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Reviewed By: on 3/16/2010

Tech Level: high - Ownership: less than 1 day

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: None

Cons: DOA

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Excellent drive, best price!

Reviewed By: on 3/9/2010

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 week to 1 month

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: Fast eSata connection. Ran a quick test, transferring 1 x 600MB file from this drive to one of my internal sata drives via USB, I got about 36MB/sec, but via eSATA I got about 103MB/sec. Do yourself a favour and buy an eSATA cable with this drive, its a waste to not spend the $5.00!!
The drive itself is a 2TB Hitatchi hds722020ala330. Nothing I can say thats bad about Hitatchi. A great deal, cost me less than the drive would have cost without the enclosure, and its 7200RPM. I don't know why people are saying the case is flimsy, its a very form-fitting case, looks decent, simple blue/purple LED that flickers during drive activity. There's no fan, but its not much warmer than my hand when I touch the casing during heavy use, its better when case doesn't *NEED* a fan - one less thing to fail.
Your money cannot be better spent than this if you're looking for a 2TB external right now.

Cons: No eSATA cable included. No claim that eSATA cable was included either, therefore no eggs docked. Perfect external drive in everyway.

Other Thoughts: I don't handle my external drives a lot, this one is used for backups so I try to keep good care of it, and turn it off when its not in use.
I pryed a bit at the ends of the drive to see if they'd pop out easily and they didn't. Anyone finding their drives are falling aparty are either handling them too much (hello its a hard drive, not a rubber ball), or it was not put together as well as this one.

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