Guys,

Thanks for the great info! I will go back to the 'drawing board' and find an
empty enclosure and buy my own drives.

FWIW, I did find some reviews on Cavalry, and they seem to say (1)
documentaiton is bad and (2) it will work if you know what you are doing.

Mark

On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 9:24 AM, Eric Shubert <ejs@shubes.net> wrote:

> Jim March wrote:
>
>> On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 7:58 AM, Mark Phillips
>> <mark@phillipsmarketing.biz> wrote:
>>
>>> I was looking at the Cavalry CADA-SA2-B (2 TB external eSata RAID 1 (2 X
>>> 2
>>> TB drives)) drive as a backup drive for 5 users using BackupPC. Anyone
>>> have
>>> experience with this product or Cavalry external drives in general. It
>>> must
>>> be new as there aren't any user reviews on Newegg.
>>>
>>> Thanks!
>>>
>>> Mark
>>>
>>
>> Here's the problem: nobody can really answer that.
>>
>> When you buy an external drive from a company that does NOT make hard
>> disks themselves, you have no clue what's really in there until you
>> either pop open the case or query it with a good format tool - gparted
>> for example will tell you what the drive is.
>>
>> Right now Western Digital makes the best drives, by a bit.  Seagate
>> isn't far behind.  Maxtor is Seagate's budget line now, avoid.
>> Hitachi sucks.  Toshiba isn't much better.
>>
>> If you buy a "Cavalry", you don't know what the heck is in there...pig
>> in a poke situation.
>>
>> If they'll sell you a chassis with no drives in it so you can add your
>> own, cool.
>>
>> Jim
>>
>
> What Jim said. :)
>
> I haven't tried Cavalry HW - been a little leary of them for no good
> reason, just gut feel. I could be off on that. So short answer is "no".
>
> I've used Acomdata enclosures. Their customer service is outstanding. They
> handled returns/exchanges for me with no hassles, when the problem was the
> HDD I put in it. Oops.
>
> I'll be using Acomdata enclosures from now on. I buy the bare drives
> separately, so I know what I'm getting (as Jim said). I wouldn't be
> surprised if Acomdata would tell you what's in a given unit if you asked
> them though.
>
> --
> -Eric 'shubes'
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------
> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
> http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
>