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Cavalry Storage CAUE Series 320 GB USB External Hard Drive CAUE37320 | 
| Brand: Cavalry
Category: CE
Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 31968
Media: Electronics
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Hard Drive Size: 320
Size: 320 GB
Shipping Weight (lbs): 6
Dimensions (in): 4.5 x 7.8 x 1.3
MPN: CAUE37320
Model: CAUE37320
UPC: 094922601384
EAN: 0094922601384
ASIN: B000I22EOA
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| Features:
| • | 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 Includes - One (1) year manufacturer's warranty, 320 GB 3.5-inch hard drive in a single bay aluminum enclosure, USB cable, stand, power adapter, Quick Start Guide and Resources CD | | • | System Requirements - Available USB port, Mac OS 9.x or newer, Windows 98SE / Me / 2000 / XP / Vista |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Cavalry Storage is a manufacturer of consumer electronics specializing in storage products.PRODUCT FEATURES:320GB Hard Drive, USB 2.0 interface;USB 2.0 and 1.1 compliant;Data transfer rate up to 480 Mbps;High quality aluminum housing with silver ground;For PC and MAC.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Nice drive...if only it worked reliably! February 9, 2008
T. Baddley (Tulsa, OK USA)
I too purchased this external drive due to the lure of it's large capacity and cheap price. I've been working in IT for the past 23 years, so I have a pretty good idea of what I'm doing. Figured there couldn't be much of a difference between the name brands and this Cavalry (probably uses drives from the same manufacturer). It's a nice size, has a great aluminum case and a pretty blue LED light on the front.
BUT...unfortunately, the first drive I received could not handle a sustained copy of My Documents (~200GB). I've tried several different backup applications, including the one that I always successfully used with my Western Digital external (FolderClone), but the Cavalry 320 fails every time. The light changes from blue to red and it completely locks up my system, requiring a reboot to return it to service. I requested a replacement from Amazon last week. They cross-shipped a new drive to me extremely quickly (they really have this part of their operation fine tuned!). With great anticipation, I hooked up the new drive and it has the exact same problem. Seems to be fine when I'm just copying small quantities of individual files...but locks up when doing my nightly backup every single time (again, causing a hard freeze of my system).
I just checked to see what got copied last night before it died and mine appears to allow plenty of >100MB files, as it seems to have successfully copied several multi-GB video files without a problem. Maybe it is a overheating issue. Wish there was SMART functionality on this drive, so I could monitor and log the temp to see if this is the issue.
I'm still doing some more testing, but in the end I'll probably just return this one too and get a name-brand external for a few $$ more. I purchased this for backup and I really need to feel that it is truly reliable. I just don't have a good feeling about this Cavalry at all!
 Too Many Cords, But Otherwise Okay February 8, 2008
A. Qian (California, USA)
Other than the fact that this product requires a lot of cords (one from the outlet to the external, and another from the external to the computer) and the switch, this works fine. The hard drive is quick, quiet with the fan, and looks great. If it were a little lighter, that would be nice too, but hey, its 300 GB.
Overheats Rapidly and Stops Working February 2, 2008
Randall Thorson
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This product is a waste of money that stops working after a few hours as it overheats.
I already own four external USB hard drives, but I was running out of hard drive space, so I shopped around on Amazon. At the time I bought it, this Cavalry hard drive was the least expensive 320GB external USB hard drive on Amazon. In this case, the adage that "You get what you pay for" was true: this cheap and shoddy hard drive failed within a few hours after I plugged it in.
This hard drive was delivered in cardboard and foam packaging rather than in a retail display box like most external hard drives usually are. That was a little suspicious, but I was willing to overlook that. Perhaps the manufacturer always shipped direct, without using a retailer middleman, so that the lack of a display box was not an indication of inferior quality.
I was initially pleased when I took the hard drive out of the box. It was 4.5" x 8" x 1.3" as advertised, a decently small size. The design is blocky and rectangular, which I consider superior to the curvy designs out there, as it facilitates stacking in my multiple-hard-drive set-up.
The power cord was sufficiently long, which was good, and the power cord fit snugly into the power connection on the hard drive (some other hard drives I've owned in the past have had problems with overly-short cords or loose connections that easily came out). However, the first strike against this hard drive was the AC adaptor, which is very wide and clunky, taking up the space of a full three slots on a power strip unless you plug it into the slot at the very end of the strip.
Anyway, I plugged it in, turned it on, and began using it. For the first four hours, everything worked fine. Then, suddenly, the hard drive stopped being able to copy files if the total filesize of the files was greater than 100MB. Nor would it copy single files of size greater than 100MB. Obviously, a 320GB hard drive that can't deal with comparatively small 100MB+ files is virtually useless.
It was at this point that I noticed that this Cavalry drive was much, much, MUCH hotter than my other four external hard drives. Clearly, the drive had an overheating problem, though I wasn't sure at first if the heat was directly linked to the problem with the files.
I spent hours trying to determine whether there might be any other source of the problem. I am a database programmer and web administrator, so I do know what I am doing, and after several hours of trying different things and a great deal of frustration, I was still unable to get the hard drive working on managing files >100MB. I'm certain that the problem was with the Cavalry hard drive (because all my other external hard drives were working fine, and because the Cavalry did not work no matter which of my several computers it was plugged into).
I turned off the hard drive and went to bed. The next day, the Cavalry hard drive having cooled down, I turned it back on and tried it again. The same thing happened: it worked at first, but after some use, it stops working on files >100MB. Only this time, it took only about ten minutes (just ten minutes!) before it stopped working.
In summary, I am hugely frustrated and angry with this piece of hardware. I want to return it, and I do not ever intend to buy a Cavalry product again. I am especially concerned because many of the reviews on the 400GB Cavalry hard drive (which seems much more popular and has many more reviews than this 320GB Cavalry hard drive that I bought) mention the same problems with overheating that I had with this 320GB Cavalry hard drive.
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