nad_masters's Full Review: ACP-EP Memory Cavalry (CAUE37500) 500 GB USB 2.0 H...
Amazon emailed me one of those weekly ads, and for some reason, I thought to myself "hmm... external 500GB for $109... that's pretty cheap!". This was, of course, months before Black Friday when you were able to find the same kind of hard drives for $80 or less.
I decided to bite, and a week later, the Cavalry Storage CAUE37500 500 GB USB 2.0 external hard drive arrived on my door step.
In the Box
Inside of the box, there really isn't much to speak of. A relatively large power brick was included which supplies both 12v and 5v in one cord. It also came with 2 screws that allows for the included plastic tray to attach to the side of the external hard drive. This allow the Cavalry hard drive to stand on its side.
There really isn't any manual to speak of or a driver CD. A USB cable was not included in the box either. It requires a standard USB-A to USB-B connection.
In Use
Like with most USB storage device, installing the Cavalry CAUE37500 is easy. If you have Windows Me, 2000, XP, or Vista, it will be automatically detected and a drive letter assigned. In Windows XP and Vista, if autorun is still enabled, you will also be prompted to pick what you'd like to do with the drive. It will even work with Macs as well, though I do not have a Mac to try it on.
With most of todays computers and laptops, you can also boot to USB storage devices, so you can try out new and exotic operating systems with this hard drive if your BIOS of your PC supports it. I was able to try out Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) on my Power Notebook Power Pro 10:15 (a Commpal IFL-90 laptop) on an actual hard drive install rather than on the live CD.
It was quick, painless, and works just as you would expect it to.
When powered up, the LED displays bright blue. As you know, I hate those things - seems like bright-blue LEDs are here to stay, which is unfortunate, as they seem to blind me when I look directly at it. When there is activity, the LED turns purple. I think there are 2 LEDs in there - one blue and one red. The red blinks while the blue stays on, which flashes and combine with the constant blue to make it look purple. It looks eerie and cool. The LED is also a button, but I'm not sure what it's suppose to do. Perhaps there was a back up program that came on a CD that never made it into the box from the factory? Normally, external hard drives with a button activate their own software to create a simple back up.
Inside the Hard Shell
To get inside of the hard aluminum enclosure, you need to peel off a one of those warranty stickers. Of course, mine was already falling loose, so it came off before I was even ready to get inside.
Once peeled off, a screw is revealed underneath. There are a total of 4 Phillip screws that hold the rear panel in place. Once taken off, the plastic panel can be removed easily. The inside chassis can now be pulled from the front along with the hard drive itself.
The hard drive is held in place by 4 more screws on the bottom. Once you remove that, you can slide the hard drive away from the SATA backplane.
Inside the Cavalry is a Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s hard drive. I was happy to see that they didn't include a lower-spec drive such as 5400 RPM spinner, smaller 8 MB cache, or an IDE interface. If you need an internal 500GB all of a sudden, you can be rest assured that you can crack your Cavalry external hard drive open for it.
Benchmarks
Cavalry could have used a slower hard drive inside of its case and no one would have noticed. USB 2.0 may be fast, but it's much slower than the native SATA 2.0 transfer speed. Because of this, the bottleneck of the USB 2.0 interface does not allow for the Western Digital hard drive to shine. This really isn't a big problem, since it is a problem shared with ALL external hard drives tethered by USB 2.0.
Reading and writing to the hard drive gives a steady 17-18 MB/second. Reading and writing small files (such as text, jpeg photos, and Word documents) achieved a much slower throughput (around 7-10 MB/sec) since there is more overhead to deal with.
When I broke out the hard drive and installed it internally to a native SATA 2.0 controller, I was able to utilize the hard drive speed fully. I was able to get a read maximum of 58 MB/sec, while the average was around an impressive 52 MB/sec. Write speeds seem to be a tad lower at around 48 MB/sec.
Still, as an external drive, you are not getting any thing slower than the competitor, so rest assure you are not missing anything.
Conclusion
There is nothing special about external hard drives. Most drives inside are made from a well known brand anyways, since there aren't any many off-brand hard drive manufacturers.
Cavalry itself may be an unknown brand, but the enclosure is solidly made. When picking the drive up powered on, you can feel the gyroscopic effect. I suggest you not do this when the power is on. Think of it as picking up a Playstation 2 when the CD inside is rapidly spinning. Not a good idea unless you want to scratch the CD. Now think about the 7200 RPM hard drive platter and the heads crashing into the surface! Yeah, it's like that...
There isn't a lot of insulation save from the rubber feet on the bottom of the unit to isolate itself from small vibrations from the surface it sits on. Do not try to sit this on a boomy sub woofer!
Cavalry does offer a scant one-year warranty, but you have to register the drive's serial number on their web site. The hard drive itself have a 3-year warranty through Western Digital. You must remove the drive from the enclosure before you send it to Western Digital, however (I had to do it once).
If you can find it cheaper than any other external 500 GB hard drives, by all means, pick it up! If not, go head and go for some of the better name-brands.
USB 2.0 (USB 1.1 backwards compatible) interface Plug and play for Windows 2000 and newer (pre-formatted to NTFS) Hard drive activity LED Unit Include...More at Amazon
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