4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Company lost serial number; FW ports failed after 2 months, August 5, 2009
If you can believe it, the company said that it lost at least part of their serial number list and had me send in a picture of the label with the serial number on it.
Then a customer service rep admitted that four other customers recently had the same not-found serial number problem with the company.
After two months the FireWire port started to drop off the network. The only way to have the RAID drives sync again would be to switch to a USB connection on another computer. But as the FW problem worsened, writing to the drive would unmount it.
Customer service was very slow to issue an RMA number because they had lost the serial number.
Amazon customer service graciously said to send it back for a 20% surcharge. Fine with us.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
worked great til it died, December 20, 2009
This review is from: Cavalry Storage CADA-C32A Series 1 TB USB / Firewire 400 & 800 Mac-Ready 2-bay RAID Personal Disk Array CADA001C32A (Personal Computers)
I gave the 1TB model with 2 500 GB drives to my wife for Christmas 2008 and until recently, we used it daily.
I wanted a safe place to store our ever-growing MP3 and photo collection and set it up in a RAID 1 configuration (two drives in a mirror). All went well until recently when I noticed that BOTH drive trouble lights were lit (!!!). Needless to say, panic ensued. I discovered that it was 10 days PAST the end of warranty (amazing how that happens), so with a feeling of dread, I popped the drive carrier out of the external drive and powered up one of the drives with my handy-dandy USB drive adapter
Vantec CB-ISATAU2 SATA/IDE to USB 2.0 Adapter Supports 2.5-Inch, 3.5-Inch, 5.25-Inch Hard Disk Drives (Black) and was able to recover ALL of my data.
It appears that the drive controller had failed on the Cavalry enclosure and the drives themselves are still ok. Since I'm past warranty, I'll probably find a generic raid enclosure and stuff the drives into it.
I'm very happy I used a RAID 1 mirror to store my data, if I hadn't, all would be lost now. Many might be tempted to use a RAID 0 (two drives striped, each holding one half of your data), but when you do so, you're twice as likely to lose all of your data since there are twice as many parts to fail.
Even though this scenario can happen to anyone, the RAID 1 enclosure did its job and kept my data safe. Since the unit appeared to be well constructed and generally trouble free, I'll consider purchasing another unit in the future.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Everything has failed!, August 28, 2009
I have had this drive for a few months now. I have it set up as a mirrored RAID drive. I own a photography business and obviously cannot lose data. I use firewire 800 on an iMac. Works great and gets lots of use. I will buy another when I need more storage.
****update****
The drive started to connect and disconnect randomly. Then it just stopped. I spent $125 to have it diagnosed and then to get my info off. Both hard drives have bad sectors and the controller in the case tested bad. So, $250 for the array, $125 to save the info and now who knows how much to purchase one that I believe will work. Trust me do not buy!!!!!!
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No