Cavalry Storage CACE Series 750 GB USB / Firewire 800 Mac-Ready External Hard Drive CACE37750

List Price: $188.99 Discount Price: $178.99

Features:

• USB 2.0 (USB 1.1 backwards compatible) and FireWire 800 (2) interface (unit supports daisy chaining)
• Plug and play for Mac OS 9.x or newer (pre-formatted to Mac OS X Extended)
• Oxford Semiconductor chipset guarantees cross platform USB 2.0 compatibility
• Unit Includes - One (1) year manufacturer's warranty, 750 GB 3.5-inch hard drive inside aluminum enclosure, USB cable, FireWire 1394b 9-pin to 9-pin cable, AC adapter, Stand, Resources CD and Quick Start Guide
• System Requirements - Available USB port or FireWire port, Mac OS 9.x or newer, Windows 98SE / Me / 2000 / XP / Vista

Customer Reviews:

USB maybe OK, but FireWire definitely not [Posted on 2008-08-24]
I learned pretty quickly why this drive had such a low price. It is because it doesn't work.

I have an iMac. I plugged this in with firewire and the drive immediately appeared and I was able to copy files to and from it. That lasted 10-15 minutes. After that the Mac Finder stopped responding and I had to turn off this hard drive to get it to snap out of it. Several similar attempts later, I turned it off and left it off.

A couple days later, I thought I'd give it a try using USB instead. This time it seemed to be working fine and gave no problems working with it for over an hour. It continued to be fine for several days (I only used it sporadically), but one day the Finder froze up again and once again I had to turn off this hard drive to get it to wake up. It has since worked fine on USB (about a week) without another lockup.

I don't feel at this point that this drive can be trusted at all. As a firewire drive, it is completely unusable. As a USB drive it is unreliable. I don't feel secure in putting any important data on this drive, not being sure if I'll get that data back.

Awful [Posted on 2008-08-27]
The drive arrived...and was defective. It constantly disconnected and re-connected itself...randomly. I'd be in the middle of trying to send a file to the drive and a message would pop up saying the drive had been improperly disconnected and data might have been damaged/lost. It certainly wasn't me who disconnected the drive - the drive disconnected itself. Or - while simply surfing the internet, not even trying to use the drive, I'd get the same error message popping up...suddenly: the drive has been disconnected improperly. Then, all on its own, again, the drive would re-connect itself. On and off, shorting in and out; a horrible glitch...making the drive completely unreliable/unuseable. I called the manufacturer for tech support. They wouldn't talk to me on the phone, insisting that I email tech support - which I instantly did. I emailed them 3 times over 3 days and got nothing in response...by phone or email. Finally - tech support did call me...only to say what I already knew: "the drive is defective." I'd never heard of Cavalry, it was the least expensive drive with that much space available - I took a chance. An old friend of mine always said "the cheap pay twice." My advice is: pay only once by buying from a quality manufacturer to begin with. Don't gamble on cheap. Or you'll be paying, as I am now, to ship the item you bought in good faith - and received in bad shape - back to Amazon. Awful.

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