Cavalry Storage Pelican 64GB External SSD Review

Manufacture Page: Cavalry: State Drive Internal Series
Part Number: CASD00064MIS
TechWiki Info: Pelican - TechWiki
Price: $150.00 USD



Today’s review is certainly a different take on the everyday USB storage device. Right now there is actually a large gap between super handy, yet ultra slow and small capacity thumb-drives and full fledged external storage devices. For many users a small USB thumb-drive is fast enough, small enough, and has enough capacity for daily uses; but there is a growing segment which need something bigger and better. In the past this meant a fully fledged external drive in an enclosure with an external power brick (or at the very least an AC plug). While there have been some attempts to take 2.5" laptop drives and put them in external cases and run them off two USB plugs. This still left the drive being fairly fragile (as it is all spindle based drives) and it was a less than optimal solution since two precious USB ports were used. Remember, many laptops in particular are not exactly overflowing with these handy little ports.

This is where the Cavalry Storage Pelican line of SSDs come into the equation. A solid state drive sans storage case is a fairly small, low powered device which still is awfully shock proof. To put this another way, the Pelican can be considered a USB thumb drive on ‘roids and not a OS replacement drive. Will the Pelican work as a laptop drive? It should and we will be taking a look at this as a viable secondary feature, but the main strength is its ability to run via USB without taking up two ports nor need an AC power brick. Need a lot of storage on a removable drive? This may be the way to go.

Cavalry Storage is probably a new name for our readers, and to be honest we had never heard of them until they approached HWC and asked for us to review their product. Cavalry storage has actually been around (in one form or another) since 1985 and are based in Southern California. The about us page states “…our products are on the cutting edge of the industry…” and go on to say they are dedicated to being the “…top external hard drive and storage device manufacturer in the industry…” and doing it by “…providing high quality products at an affordable price, but in no way sacrificing the highest level of customer service and technical support.…” These are high and lofty goals and if the part about cutting edge tech is any indication this little drive may just open up some major doors in the Canadian market for them.

While the Pelican line of devices is not readily available in Canada, the 64GB version goes for about $150 at online US e-tailers. We certainly wouldn’t be surprised to see these start to pop up in online Canadian e-tailers soon. As with any external storage solution there are two main questions any potential customer has to ask and answer: a) is this a viable product which will meet my needs? b) is this a good value?. While answers to these questions will vary from person to person (and even instance to instance) we will endeavor to give you our readers the necessary tools to answer these questions. We certainly are intrigued about this take on the normal SSD so let’s get to it.