Cavalry EN-CADA4B-CFI eSATA RAID 0/1/10/5/JBOD 4-Bay Disk Array Tower w/ eSATA Card Bundle
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 Rating: Review Date: 06/23/13 |
Cavalry EN-CADA4B-CFI eSATA RAID 0/1/10/5/JBOD 4-Bay Disk Array Tower w/ eSATA Card Bundle
Cons:- Little technical support from company, but lots of info on the unit if you look around a bit.- Not real hardware raid, but it's only $200.
Pros:- 4 bay drive expansion- Quiet- Easy to setup and configure- Fast / Decent speeds |
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Rating: Review Date: 02/09/11 |
Cavalry EN-CADA4B-CFI eSATA RAID 0/1/10/5/JBOD 4-Bay Disk Array Tower w/ eSATA Card Bundle
Cons:Poor RAID5 Write performance (~5MB/s)- (I suspect this is normal for this class of product)Setup is NOT user friendly - Relies solely upon SiI drivers and softwareTook 3 DAYS to build a 5.5 TB RAID 5 (4x2TB Drives) before I could use it.It requires the bundled eSATA card to work. Will possibly work with other eSATA RAID cards as well.
Pros:Well Built ChassisGood Read Performance in RAID 5 Comment:
Overall this was not a good purchase. I had to figure out everything myself. I am somewhat computer savvy so I was able to get it sorted in short order however I believe the average consumer would have found this very challenging to build.This is the bare bones version of a RAID unit that Calvary offers so I may have screwed things up, but I did get it to work in the end. Their website section for the bare enclosure is under construction so there may be hope in the future.I would not have bought this knowing what I know now.The read performance is acceptable, so if you don't mind the slow write speeds, ~5MB/s on large files, it will work for you.I purchased the MediaSonic eSATA/USB case a week after the Cavalry arrived and it has been working fine since - the write performance is still slow but I was using it in about 20 minutes. It is also portable. I am on the fence about returning this product as it will make for an interesting set of spare parts.If you purchase this, please note that it will not be a simple plug 'n play experience like the other encl This review was modfied by poster @ 02-10-11 04:40 AM |
I read the other review someone left on this unit and wanted to counter with my own experience. This unit was easy to setup. The software installed perfectly on Win7Pro and Home x64. It also works with some tweaking on Server 2008R2 HyperV (console) and Server 2012. The RAID isn't setup from the card, which one would expect because there is a bios feature.. it's done inside of windows from it's own raid software.I used 4x WD 1TB blacks in the unit, and typically saw 120MB/s transfers from, and 80MB/s to in RAID5 configuration. Once again, I don't know the other person's setup, but they either had sloooow hard drives and old firmware or something.This unit worked great for me, and we use these units for cheap, small businesses who want slow backup media and storage. It's not a backup, but a repository for putting BackupExec/Veeam backups to, until transferred to removable media.