Customer Reviews

Cavalry Storage CAXM External Hard Drive (CAXM3701T0)

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(19)

 

 

I'd avoid this drive. The first problem is that stand is omitted from the box so you must contact the company to get one. My first drive failed within two weeks. They ignored some of my communications. The RMA process is slow and you must pay to ship and insure the drive back to them. The replacement drive failed in the first two hours. It was sloppily packed, so I presume it was a used one. I again had to begin the slow RMA process and pay to ship and insure it again with my money. It's been six weeks since I purchased and still don't have a working drive.

I think the drives are either of very poor quality or poorly tested. I've never in eighteen years have had a hard drive last under two years.

Update: I received my third Cavalry drive. It came in a beat up box, poorly packed, rubber banded cables, serial number taped over, case scratched, and "warranty void if removed" sticker missing. The socket for the eSATA cable is so loose the cable will not seat securely. Bumping the drive ever so lightly locks up my DirecTV box. As I will not likely get a working product from Cavalry, I removed the drive from their case and directly wired it to my DirecTV receiver using an old PC power supply.

I have Time Warner service and DVR Explorer 8300HDC (with OCAP OS). I have this product for about 3 weeks now; no reboot, reset or estrange behavior whatsoever.

When I connected the HDD to the DVR eSATA interface, the DVR automatically recognized it and ask for formating. After clicked OK that was the last configuration that i did.

Recommended

My CAXM 1TB External Hard Drive contains Hitachi HDT721010SLA360 Hard Disk. It's a very good disk for an external hard drive. Check out tomshardware review of Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.B.

Here are some disk specs from the review: "... HDT721010SLA360, which can be broken down like so: Hitachi Deskstar T-series (HDT), 7,200 RPM (72), maximum family capacity 1 TB (the first 10), actual capacity (the second 10), the generation (S) and Z-height (L stands for 26.1 mm), the interface (3 = SATA/300) and the cache capacity (6 = 16 MB)."

So, it is a 7200 RPM disk with 16 MB cache and quite low idle power consumption - 5.4W, which should make it perfect for eSATA capable DVRs.

It works well with my DirecTV HR22-100 DVR.

The black CAXM measures 7 5/8" x 4 3/8" x 1 1/4" or 193mm/112mm/32mm, it has a power switch (very convenient for a backup disk which is not going to be always on), eSATA and USB 2.0 interfaces, the enclosure is aluminum and it has no cooling fans. The stand is plastic and it is held in place by friction, it's a little flimsy, but does the job.

The disk looks and feels high quality and it is not going to be an eyesore on your desk or next to your DVR.

My disk came with the stand, an eSATA bracket for a desktop, a 100-244V~ 50-60Hz Power adapter with 5' adapter to disk cable (the adapter looks a little different from the one, shown on the product pictures and it measures: 3.5"x2"x1.3", excluding the integrated two prong power plug), a 48" eSATA cable and a 40" USB cable. Very nice package for the price!

My first purchase was a silver CAXE3701T0. I've owned it for about 2 months and am using it with a Tivo HD. About a month ago, I purchased the black CAXM3701T0. Both units are relatively quiet. Both boxes feel barely warm to the touch. Both have an on/off switch. I have not opened the enclosure, but I've read that others have confirmed the silver model has a Western Digital drive. The only difference that I have noticed is the black enclosure is 9" long and the silver is only 8" long. I have not had any issues with either drive reading/writing 24x7 with my Tivo units.

One note for Tivo HD owners. This unit is "plug and play" for the Tivo HD series 3 with the larger internal hard drive. But the Tivo HD model without the series 3 in the description (TivoHD) and smaller internal hard drive, it requires opening the Tivo unit, temporarily attaching the internal and external Cavalry drive to a PC, running a quick program to pair the two drives, and then putting everything back together. You can find the instructions on the tivocommunity dot com forums by searching for "external tivo storage". From start to finish, it should take most people less than 30 minutes to complete.

UPDATE 9/13/2011: I happened to click on my user ID and glanced at my old reviews. I figured it wouldn't hurt to mention BOTH of my hard drives are STILL WORKING with my TIVOs. 3.5 years of contstant spinning... very impressive in my opinion!!! I'll try to remember to update my review once either of them fail.

I have had my HD for almost two years now and not a single problem, except the time shortly after purchase when I switched it on AFTER turning on my computer (computer does not recognize device under such conditions when linked to the esata input-and I almost returned it) also DO NOT turn off until AFTER you have turned of your computer.
A faultless, smooth running device I highly recommend this product, I have several HD's and this one is by far the best.

Just opened this product and very anxious to get about 500g of data off my HDD. Had to have eSata for the speed and when plugged in the drive was not recognized by computer. It would work well with USB; however, I needed the eSata to work. After two days of downloading drivers and checking the BIOS setting, I thought I read somewhere to cut a few mm off the rubber near the end of eSata cable and then plug into drive and it connected beautifully and works fine thus far. The rubber prevented the cable from being inserted properly!?!?!

I purchased the 1TB Calvary (CAXB37091T0) in 2008 Dec. Six months in and I am getting another one to clone the original for offsite storage. The hardware has worked flawlessly for me. I am a seasoned IT professional of over 20 years (Unix and Windows administrator). Backing up to an external drive saved me big time. My PC burned up and smoked my 2 internal drives. I restored onto the new hardware with this 1TB drive. I am happy.

First device hooked up easy, loaded files, and died after three days. Contacted Cavalry, tried to restore...lost ALL files saved on the device. Cavalry replaced device in about two weeks. Second device hooked up easy, loaded files...and died after three days.

This is the perfect backup solution.

Here's the deal, people... You don't need your backup drives to be 100% reliable. You just need two drives to be less expensive than one drive. No drive is 100% reliable. ANY -- and I mean ANY two drives are more reliable than any one drive.

Here's what you do:

Buy two drives.
Copy everything to drive #1 the first time you backup.
Next time, copy everything to drive #2.
Repeat.

You will always have THREE copies of your data (with the exception of the newest stuff, of which you will only have two copies). The probability of any one drive failing at a time is high enough to warrant having a backup. The probability of TWO drives failing, simultaneously... is almost zero.

Buy two, alternate which one you use to do your backup. Simple as that. This drive is perfect for the most intelligent backup solution you can do. Reasonably fast, too. I'm currently backing up 731GB of data and on track to finish in under 3 hours.

Happy shopping!

The unit is advertised as compatible on Windows and OSX (Apple) systems. To use it on OSX, the drive must be reformatted to Apple disk drive file format. Instructions are provided by the manufacturer. The conversion completed without incident. I connected the disk drive to the OSX computer via a V2.0 USB port. The problem occurs when OSX puts the disk drive in sleep mode and later re-awakens it. The disk drive can resume into a indeterminate state. OSX will report a error -53 (Drive is read only) if there is an attempt to write a file, create a folder, or any other write operation to the drive. OSX will also report an error -50 (Drive in use) if you try to dismount the drive. Yet, "no" application is using the disk drive. You must use Apple's Finder application to "force" dismount option to dismount the disk drive. Although a "force" dismount work without incident 99% of the time, it is dangerous because 1% of the time, the drive data can be left in a inconsistent or corrupted state. The manufacturer confirmed the error and offered to exchange the CAXM for a firewire based CAXR unit. I chose to return the drive to Amazon for a refund. I am very happy with Amazon's sales / return policy.