Bason Computer, Inc. Cavalry Storage CADA-SA2 Series 2 TB USB/eSATA 2-Bay RAID Personal Disk Array (Black) CADA002SA2-B - Includes eSATA Kit

Add me to the list. My unit stopped working six months after purchase and, unfortunately for me, I didn't read all the fine print of the warranty details. Cavalry does not do data recovery. They will only repair the product and you will lose all of your data, completely defeating the entire purpose of owning this thing. The worse part is the warranty is void if you open up the unit yourself to recover the data!! The only other option is to go to an overpriced licensed repair shop. No thanks, I'll recover the data myself and take the hit with the non-functioning casing. This will be the last Cavalry product I ever buy.

Out of the box the unit is loud because exhaust fan. The fan is small, tiny that end up being too weak for the amount of heat that is generated. I bought this product earlier in the year and I have gone through 2 exhausts fans. As for the unit it has some nice features and for a cheap price but some additional cost of being a headache. If you willing to repair/replace the fan yourself and deal with the noise it's an ok product, but with this item you get what you pay for.

I purchased this model because of the price and options, specifically being able to plug it in to an eSATA port. After getting everything setup (more below), the drive has worked wonderfully. With the included WD drives, the drive verify and storage is very nice. It works great as a backup system. Now the problems. Setup was a bear! Given the fact that documentation is non-existent out of the box, I had to "rebuild" the drives twice, at over 12 hours EACH! The drive is supposed to be PnP, and maybe it is, but there were no clear instructions on setting it up. I plugged it in and it didn't work. I played with my eSATA connection and couldn't get it to work. I plugged it in to a USB and it worked fine so no drive issue. I then plugged in the included eSATA port and then couldn't figure out how to "format" the drives, so the 2nd rebuilding began. Finally, I found instructions online and after skipping 3-4 pages, found where to setup the software to make it work. Without that setup fiasco, this product would be rated higher. It has worked fine for me since.

The documentation for this procuct is incomplete and required direct contact with the maunufacturer. That being said, once up & running it is an excellent value.

This 2Tb array is a great deal. It worked as a Raid 1 drive right out of the box and was reconfigured to Raid 0 using the supplied utilies in about 10 minutes. The trick is you have to READ THE DIRECTIONS. You can't skim over them or just look at the pictures. After I was finished installing the unit I had a question about tranfer speed and was thrilled to find that when I called Cavalry that not only did they put me through to a real tech, he was glad to talk to me and knew what he was doing. Other companies just don't do that anymore. All in all, one of the better experiences I've had with a tech product.

I bought this drive because of a simple reason - RAID1 - I wanted to make sure my data is protected, so I am using just 1TB of space, the second drive is used for mirroring. Today the enclosure went bad (lasted just 6 months) - blinking green light (according to the Cavalry manual indicating no connectivity to the host computer), and OS stopped recognizing the drive. I tried USB instead of eSATA, and also tried USB on another computer - negative, OS does not see the drive, enclosure is blinking green. The unit is still on warranty, but check the choices I have: (1) send the unit back to manufacturer for warranty repair. Then my data is LOST, since the manufacturer will either send me a replacement or will fix this original unit and erase all data in the process. (2) send this unit to a third party company to get the data off the unit (and pay like $500 for the service), then ship the unit to Cavalry for repair along with a paper from the third party company explaining that the unit was opened for data recovery, so Cavalry would not void the warranty (3) open the unit myself and copy the data from it (remember, the drives are OK, it is the enclosure itself that went bad) but then Cavalry voids the warranty since I should not open the unit. Laughable situation.. but the data is safe ;-) A side note - the unit is noisy too.

Setup is a little painful because they provided incorrect/insufficient documentation for the product (even on their website). Luckily I was able to contact customer service and she walked me through the setup (this included dis-assembling the drive array). Long story short, I have a nice 2TB RAID config, but can only get it working correctly with USB.

I works great and has a ridiculous amount of storage for the money. It is a fast drive and comes with the esata cable and a connector to the motherboard sata connectors.