Product: Cavalry 2-Bay Hard Drive Dock
Manufacturer: Cavalry
MSRP: $39.99
Author: Linas
Date: February 22, 2009

SATA docks are everywhere. Every company has their own version of essentially the same thing. But today we have something a little different, the Dual Hdd Dock from Cavalry. This drive can accommodate not only one, but two SATA drives at once, and connects them to your computer with the ubiquitous USB 2.0 interface.

First Impressions

The dock comes in a glossy cardboard box with everything needed for use included. An interesting feature is the lack of a user’s manual with this product. Instead, Cavalry opted to include all of the instructions on a side of the box. It certainly cuts down on excess paper that wont get read more than once, but the instructions on the side of the box route is a little vague for my liking.

The dock feels substantial and solidly put together. It is made out of plastic, but thankfully Cavalry decided to forgo the glossy, fingerprint magnet treatment on this product and use a plain matte black finish. However, the dock can largely be described as being plain. The back panel features ports for USB and power, a power button, and a set of jumpers to set between JBOD mode or Spanning mode. Moving to the front there are LEDs for hard drive activity and power to keep things interesting.

One issue with this product is that the ports seem loose on this product. There is a considerable amount of play in the cables and drives. Everything makes good contact, but there are an extra couple millimeters of space allowing the drive to rock forward and back. This doesn’t seem to stress the connector or anything, but it is possible that in the future the pins could lose contact if this product is used in a rough neighborhood. Neighborhood violence, particularly gunfire, could cause enough vibration to interrupt file transfers.

Also on the back panel, the set of jumpers presents a bit of an issue. The only safety on the jumpers is a sticker telling the user to have only one jumper in the “on” position at a time to prevent permanent damage. I would have liked to see some sort of safety, but the current system is effective as long as the user takes care to read the sticker.

Originally, my unit did not include this warning sticker and was DOA.  The warning label should have been included from the outset, or the instruction panel should have more information about this issue.  There have been numerous users reporting DOA units on sites like Newegg; this is likely a result of incorrectly set jumpers from the beginning, or users not being warned of this issue.

Use

After plugging in this dock, I was pleasantly surprised by the ease of use. Under Windows XP I found the drives quickly recognized and mounted (whether I used one or both hard drives). And was able to use them any way I wanted. Also, surprisingly, my drives were recognized under Ubuntu Linux. Cavalry only lists Windows 2000/XP/Vista and Mac OS 10.3+ as compatible, so I was excited to see the product exceeding the manufacturer specifications. .

The jumpers on the dock give the user two options: JBOD – Just a Bunch of Disks – and Spanning/JBOD. If two drives are formatted as independent disks, JBOD mode mounts each drive as an individual drive, acting like any other drives plugged into your system. Switching to Spanning/JBOD mode with two independently formatted drives will lead to a little disappointment. Waiting for the drives to mount, I only found one drive my explorer window. The cause for this is what makes JBOD work. When two (or more) drives are set up as a JBOD array, the capacities are pooled together to make what looks and acts like a single, larger drive.

Nothing out of the ordinary occurred during my use of this product. It allows a user to easily swap out one or two SATA hard drives externally with minimal fuss. You still must eject or unmount the drives from the OS before removing them from the dock, but this is just like any USB attached storage.

Conclusion

This is a very capable product. I could easily recommend this to someone interested in either shuffling around data or looking to increase storage capacity with a couple hard drives and a single USB port. A mild side-effect of this product for those planning to use older drives is a bit of upgrade-itis. I never noticed how hot and noisy my drives were until I started using them outside my case within a few feet of my ears.

Pros

+  Easy to use
+ Clean looking
+ Solid Construction

Cons

- Wobbly connectors
- No jumper safety

Tags: Cavalry, dock, hard drive, hdd, USB