I have purchased three of these units (Mar 2008 500GB, Jun 2008 500GB, and Nov 2009 1TB). I use only the SATA connection.
The first one is still working fine, and contains a Western Digital Caviar drive (WD5000AAJS).
The second one reported itself to software as being a Western Digital drive, but it failed after 16 months and when I opened it up, it actually contained some no-name Platinum PWD5000 drive, masquerading as a Western Digital drive - not ethical!
The third one arrived with the SATA connection not working at all, only the USB. It had a "Hitachi inside" sticker on the box and this time indeed did have a Hitachi drive inside.
In conclusion, Cavalry cannot be trusted to put decent drives in these enclosures, and indeed used a no-name unreliable one pretending to be a decent drive. Furthermore, the part that Cavalry makes (the SATA/USB card inside the enclosure) is not reliable.
For my latest drive (Dec 2009), I bought a bare drive (Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB) and the Vantec NexStar CX NST-300SU-BK enclosure, so far so good.
By the way, as a backup strategy, I use two 1TB drive enclosures, one of which is stored at a friend's house. I copy all the drive partitions on my computer to a 1TB drive (using Macrium Reflect free imaging software) which takes about 2 hours and 20 minutes for 360GB of data, using SATA. Once a week when I go to my friend's house, I swap the two drive enclosures.
Get more detail about Cavalry Storage CAXM Series 1 TB USB / eSATA External Hard Drive CAXM3701T0 - Includes eSATA Kit.
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