Vantec NST-260SU-BL NexStar 3 External Hard Drive Enclosure - 2.5, USB 2.0, eSATA, Blue

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It looks very good. It connects to USB and eSATA. You get the enclosure, usb cord, carrying case, eSATA cable, and an SATA to eSATA converter bracket. It stays cool. slides around quickly -- demands some rubber pads underneath it to retain it in location.

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I purchased this with a 500GB Western Digital Scorpio Blue, loaded the WD drive, cloned my new macbook's 250GB really hard drive to it, booted from the external drive and ran like that for numerous hours to test it, swapped the drives, and then reformatted the 250GB mac drive and set it up as my time machine backup (sans music/tv). At no point did I have any problems with heat or something else. I was also pleasantly surprised to not notice a drop in efficiency operating off the external drive. The case is strong and holds the drive snugly. So snugly, in reality, that I had to peel the plastic tab off the mac's drive to get it in, but I figured that was much better for heat transfer anyway. As has been said in other reviews, the enclosure isn't terribly stable on finish or on a smooth surface. The torque of the cable is essentially adequate to topple it over. This would take place with any such thin drive, on the other hand. So if vertical stability is additional crucial to you than portability, I recommend you look at three.five" enclosures. As for the metal feet, I'm not so concerned with the drive scooting around on my desk as I am with it scratching it (although I haven't yet noticed any marks). All this said, I am absolutely satisfied with my purchase and have already advisable it to two of my good friends. As has also been stated, the integrated fancy USB cable awkwardly fits inside the carrying case, which includes two pouches, one for the cable and one for the drive. The great news is that neither drive I employed required the extra USB plug for energy. So I just replaced the fancy incorporated cable with a significantly slimmer, flimsier USB cable, solving each the storage and vertical stability issue.

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All metal construction, seems really robust. Properly thought out design and style. Nice paint job. Has all the cables, including eSATA and double head USB (for powering drives if single headed USB doesn't supply adequate power to spin your drive-mine did).Has a nylon carrying case which is a nice touch. I retain my drive always in the mesh pocket side, even when plugged in for "air cooling" through the mesh.Vantec supplies a port for a 5V DC input on the back side of the drive for these that don't want to use USB power for the HDD. No DC cable is supplied, even so, but the manual gives you all the specs you need to uncover a suitable DC plug/brick. Even though the nylon carrying case is good, when attempting to store both eSATA cables and double-headed USB cable in their pouches, it tends to get "fat", pressing down on the HDD although zipped up. I'm worried that the added pressure on top of the HDD drive although zipped up will push down on the HDD lid also significantly in the zipped case? Probably not a big deal, as the HDD heads are not over the disk when the drive is powered down inside the zipped up case.Men and women have mentioned it requires rubber feet. I agree. The bent metal feet on it are slippery, and may well scratch surfaces it's sitting on? It was easy to put a 160GB Seagate 7200 RPM drive in this point. Slipped ideal in, with no computer software necessary for my XP and Vista computers. That rapid drive only required a single USB cable to power up the drive, but it's good that Vantec supplied a double-headed USB cable if you have a laptop that puts out weak power via the USB port.I corrupted my drive at a single point and had to reformat. THIS WAS NOT THE FAULT OF THE VANTEC UNIT. I feel I had a hiccup in the course of an eSATA transfer. I believe it was due to the fact I did not turn off HDD caching. Since this is a portable drive, there is a greater likelihood of pulling a plug throughout transfer, causing corruption. I STRONGLY Suggest turning off write caching on the external HDD, by going into "Device Manager", "Disk Drives", right clicking on the external HDD and going to "Properties", and then the "Policy" tabs. Choose "optimize for quick removal". It makes copying a tiny slower, but a corrupted difficult drive is no fun! It trashed all my dat

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Slim, aluminum, and appealing. The integrated USB cable is a little unwieldy. You can't fold it and put it in the carrying case with your HDD. This was the very first external enclosure I have ever bought. I am pleased, with its performance and don't have any complaints with this product. At the identical time, having it has shown me what I genuinely wanted my external enclosure to have. If I would have shopped about a tiny additional I could have got an enclosure that had a firewire port. Tough drives mount and unmount to/from the pc quicker when attached by firewire.

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great functionality even with usb. straightforward to set up. really sturdy. none wish it had the power connector for eSATA use.

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Extremely compact, easy set up, looks great and performs nicely.Really quiet (with WD caviar blue 500GB) and keeps quite cool as the casing dissipates heat rather effectively.I am incredibly content. None to mention so far! I bought this case immediately after seeing my buddies and haven't had any second thoughts.

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It functions. It does not cost a lot of $ None I am ordering a second one particular currently.

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Very good style, frame feels pretty sturdy, I'd feel comfy tranporting it about on a regular basis. Genuinely quick read/write time on my WD 500GB drive. Fairly quiet as effectively, but I suppose that's additional a function of the drive than the case. I wager that it would be virtually silent if it had been slightly larger and had some added sound deadening material added in. Laughably brief power cable (about 5ft). It's fine if you have an outlet nearby, but if your Computer is anything over 7ft away from an outlet, forget it. If it weren't for this glaring oversight on vantec's portion, i'd give it 5 eggs. Integrated CD seemed quite useless, all it had were the installation directions in pdf format and some backup utility. I'll pass.I'm using it through USB, so I can't comment on it's direct SATA interface setup, but transfers are lightning swift over USB and only takes seconds to initialize from a cold begin.I'd reccommend this to anybody I know.

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Compact, esata, comes with energy supply, slick looking design... If you look at the average temp of this unit getting 120-127F cool.... get 1..... If I had to do it once again, I would take into account 1 with a fan.... I have a 300 gig Maxtor and its been cooking in this issue for over two years... Time for me to jump on a Fanned unit ..... Seriously, I fell for the "Aluminum" enclosures that "keeps the drive cool" lines.... feel about it.... if its sealed, where is the heat to go...??? what is drawing the heat away from the HD..??? a sealed aluminum skin??? Alum is not the best conductor of heat...There are no cooling fins, vents, heat tubes are any other kind of current cooling technology in this sealed metal tight fitting enclosure... If space permits, get one particular with a fan... you will be a lot happier!

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The drive looks wonderful and feels solid. Very content with it. The eSATA speeds are at correct levels. The supplied eSATA cable did not work with my laptop. I had a different 1 which worked fine.

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eSATA definately faster than the USB connection. They contain a SATA to eSATA motherboard connector. The included cable has a 'Y' adapter for added power if necessary. And the additional power USB is inline, which means you can still have a device plugged into that port. The shiny outside is a fingerprint magnet. Shiny comes at a price. Carrying situation could have been greater created like with an elastic band to hold the drive in as an alternative of just the material pouch. Keep in thoughts that while making use of the eSATA with the included MB adapter the USB is nonetheless required for power.

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I had a WD Passport 250GB that died on me within 6 months (due to my own failure to "safely eject"). I pulled the HD out of the WD enclosure and it worked fine when plugged directly into Pc.I got this enclosure to replace the WD one and it's been operating like a champ.Great and shiny.The USB cable that comes with it has 2 plugs so you can actually give the drive far more energy.I've observed this cable just by itself cost almost half the cost of this enclosure...so it's a good deal with the cable. The nylon situation (not the enclosure) is a little tight.The pouch inside the situation for the drive is seriously truly snug.And you can't seriously carry the eSATA and USB cables with each other in the net mesh. Great little enclosure for the price.I want it had tiny rubber feet...the aluminum enclosure sitting on a desk can slide around a excellent bit.I discovered such small feet at a hardware shop and it's now the very best transportable drive I've ever owned.

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Nicely built, my Hitachi 200gb 7200rpm drive went from 30MB/s to 50.4MB/s typical speed when utilizing eSATA, which tends to make it fantastic for operating a 2nd OS and just modifying the boot order.Comes with all the cables, which is additional than I can say for some brands retail drives. I've read about powered eSATA. If this could have had that, it would be wonderful to plug it in with a single cable rather than USB & eSATA.The Silver a single didn't have cost-free shipping, so I settled for Blue. I also have four of the Vantec NexStar CX two.5" USB only enclosures. The newest 1 I bought from Newegg (the end of 2008) had a punchout for eSATA, so hopefully they will release a model of that with eSATA as well as USB.The case just appears unnecessary to me, but I'm sure some folks will like it. Personally, I'd rather see it omitted and get the value dropped.Could be an concern with my motherboard rather than the enclosure, but I have to reboot my laptop for my system to recognize the drive when plugged into eSATA. The motherboard, an Abit IP35 Pro, utilizes a jMicron controller for the eSATA. It's doable that if you use an additional controller, it is definitely plug and play rather than plug, reboot, and play.

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This is a sweet tiny situation.It goes together well and is relatively straightforward.I use it just about every day in my line of work,it hasn't let me down.The blue led isn't to bright or annoying. none I'm planing on acquiring the three.five" case to match this a single.

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Does what it says. eSATA, USB2. Generally performs, and the blue light is bright sufficient to scare away the boogy man. There's ZERO venting for the challenging drives, so they get quite hot if employed for a lot more than an hour. This, as we all know, reduces tricky drive life- which is poor. In reality, this factor gets so hot, it's practically hard to choose the device up right away right after using it. (I have TWO of these units, with matching tough drives- and they are both hot following use- with more than AMPLE spacing in between them for air flow) Thus, I am taking a full dot off of the General Rating. Soon after taking out my drives, measuring meticulously for the best way to get some air passing through this device, I determined that by drilling threeǞ" holes with spaces of about threeǞ" amongst each, that the drive (which sits on a shelf in my garage) manages to keep much cooler now. In truth, it's no longer hot to the touch- which means my tricky drive is a small bit happier. Not recommended for the average idiot to attempt this feat... not that you're the idiot... as I obviously am! ;[)

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USB functions fine! eSATA worked one time. Considering that then the drive disappears when the eSATA cable is hooked up. Even tried a 3rd party USB 5V cable yet eSATA still failed to show up. Tried rebooting, hooking up all cables but eSATA nonetheless won't perform. Pooh!

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Sata, USB two. none From what I have heard the eSATA doesn't function I haven't tried this yet.

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Drive fits snuggly. Operation (with USB) flawless. Does not come with power provide. Does not work with a lot of 3rd party USB cables. I own two of these. One particular I've had for about two years the second I just purchased for use with a 500gB western digital. These enclosures have been the most trustworthy pieces of personal computer equipment I've owned which proves you don't always have to invest a lot to get a lot. My a single complaint is discovering extra USB cables has been a real chore. Third party cables don't seem to present adequate power to run these drives. I'm at present contacting Vantec to get recommendations.

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Beautiful style, very excellent workmanship Would not function. Created excessive work to get these working but the system never get past the "read error." I purchased two of these. I suggest attempting a different manufacturer. It's upsetting to devote so a lot time tring to get a item to operate, then have to fool about with re-wraping and spending much more dollars on postage for a item that need to operate.

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Rock strong construction and a very good design. Comes with a excellent case. None. I have dealt with a lot of enclosures and this one particular is worth each and every penny. I have two of them and have under no circumstances looked back. Hold in mind that for the value you are also receiving the situation, which some individuals will have to go buy with other enclosures/drives for another บ or so. It is truly a excellent acquire, very suggested.

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I have been making use of the eSATA interface, so the trasfer speed far surpasses my PATA internal drives. Sleek appear - shiney black. I was a small worried about the stability of the tiny base if comes with but it has not been a problem. Very first chance I get I think I will be getting another. The light is a tiny vibrant, but you dont have to connect it either. eSATA != equal hot swapable. windows has a panic attack if you unplug this guy although its on, guess its a very good point it also has USB

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The case looks truly good. The body is aluminum and the end caps seem to be chromed plastic. Performance is reasonable for this sort of device employing a Toshiba 160GB Sata-2 drive. The eSATA cable and bracket are a nice touch and work with no problem. (Ubuntu 7.ten, 8.04) The supplied USB cable is somewhat thick and chintzy. You have to wad it up fairly tight to fit in the supplied case. It would be nice if they had offered a power adapter for the DC-in, but the jack size is a quite prevalent. Searching around my house, I discovered two USB hubs and a USB-to-cell phone cable that had the identical plug. The power situation is exciting. Most of the time I use only a single USB plug to power the drive. If my laptop is operating on battery, I will need to use each USB plugs to get enough juice.

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30 second install time, this issue is really quite, and i don't use that term generally doesn't include things like a 5v connector. . . use the USB for power rather haven't tried eSata compatability, but i'm guessing it worksi'd but an additional in a heartbeat

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It comes with a carrying case, all the cables you will need, and it took me much less than five min to put together and produced it start operating. It fell 3 feet to a tile floor, when I moved my laptop OOPS, no harm, it still works.. The protective carrying case is good! Comes with all attainable required hardware, even even though I'm just using the E-sata. Purchased this with the Rosewill express sata card-each are operating fine, no drivers needed in VISTA.. Tight slide placing the drive, mounted to the card in at 1st. I just wiggled it a bit, and it went in. I utilised a five volt adaptor I had from a an old external drive I had, plus it will power up just fine, if you plug in the USB cord in addition to the E sata.Wish they had supplied their own five volt power provide. No biggy, prolly would have driven the cost up.

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esata, usb powered, compact design, effortless to install, dissipates heat nicely. sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeek. the solder on the usb connector has detached. i think the longer male component on some usb cables might sometimes strain those points on the board. RMA'd, but up till then it's fantastic. i use the 3.5 sata->esata vantecs as properly as the two.five. following trying a number of corporations i've located the vantec circumstances (and though not great) to be by far the all about greatest.