Vantec Nexstar MX External 3.5IN SATA Black Aluminum INTERNAL/EXTERNAL Drive Enclosure USB 2.0

Comment:
this is by far the loudest fan on any piece of electronic equipment that I have. the enclosure uses a small fan that is on all the time at high speed. I find it painful to listen to the thing for extended periods of time. wish they had a db rating standard for this sort of thing so I could screen in advance. otherwise seems quite competent. stuck two drives in it with no trouble, and probably 15 minutes setup max. sufficient for my use, which is recovering data from an old desktop, but I would not want to use this as any sort of primary drive. get rid of the fan noise and this would be a fantastic unit at a reasonable price.

Comment:
I gave it a 3 for quality, as I found that the holes for the screws that hold the cover to the frame were partly cut off, as if they shaved the edge of the frame. This made getting the screws in straight hard. Weird! 2 tips: 1) Put a rubber mouse pad under the drive, it will cut down on the noise. 2) They don't mention this in the manual, but you have to have the drive powered up when you push the reset switch to change the Raid mode selection. Took me a while to figure this out as you have to have the case open to get to the jumpers and the reset switch. Again, Weird!

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The reason for my purchase of this item was to take the two HDD's out of my now defunct desktop and hook them up to my laptop. The unit was simple to put together and it was easy to get the HDD's into the unit. I'm no techie, but even for a novice like me, it was easy...I would recommend this product to anyone that wants extra storage for their PC.

Comment:
Good. Worked as expected, but noisy fan.

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I do professional audio work and have recently expanded my studio to include video editing services. So I need a LOT of hard drive storage. I was looking for an eSATA enclosure that would allow me to backup projects from one of my internal drives to an external. Initially, I had some drive format issues because my eSATA port does not multiplex. I found the documentation to be a little unclear. Once I formatted the drives using another single drive enclosure. everything was very cool. I'd love to see a tool free external drive case in this price range, but using the screwdriver to change the drives is not that big of a deal. The enclosure seems to run cool, looks good, takes up a small footprint and is quiet.

Comment:
Overall, it's a great product with a lots of configurations to works with. I've got some issues while running it eSata with Windows 7 rc (64bit). I don't know if it's the MX who's in problem or the OS, need to make more tests. I'm running it in Raid0 config right now, that's why the eSata would be great for me if it worked correctly (only getting 30mb/s when usb connected). Oh, and the fan is really noisy ! I had to modify the rear end where the fan's plugged to get less noises. You can unplug it but I don't think that's a great idea to do it since I've got 2TB in it. And if you can find a 40mm noiseless fan, let me know!

Comment:
This enclosure has been working great since I got it working. What I mean is, the one thing missing from the manual is the fact that the unit must be powered ON when you press the reset button when trying to change the configuration (ie. JBOD,RAID-1)

Comment:
I bought two of these. One for my friend. They look great, run cool, and are pretty good. Unfortunately, I wanted a 3TB partition which it doesn't support. One manual told me to set the jumpers one way and the other another way for JBOD. I emailed support regarding the 3TB partition. I got an email a couple of days later with an explanation. I followed up and never got a reply. Too bad, I wouldn't have returned them otherwise.

Comment:
Nothing cheap and flimsy about this enclosure. Just be careful to know what your operating system and hardware will support relevant to RAID, JBOD and eSATA before purchasing. Worked flawlessly in RAID 0 with 2 500 GB WD Enterprise drives with Mac Pro USB. Fan is low noise and keeps the drives cool, Very easy drive install into the enclosure. Blue power LED is not on when power applied. Green HDD2 LED is illuminated when unit is ON. Dazzling bright blue LED blinks when drive accessed. Backwards, but not a real problem. Deserved a 3 rating for quality. All aside, still overall good value for money spent.

Comment:
Honestly, I don't know what more I can ask for of this drive. The construction is SOLID. No worries there. Installation is a snap, and it works flawlessly. I have it in RAID 1 using 2 WD Black 1 TB drives. I don't leave it on 24/7 (it's only to backup crucial data) but if you do, the fan may be a bit loud to have it on the desktop next to you. Fortunately, the USB cord is pretty long.

Comment:
REVIEWED BY BOGIE1965 2-25-09///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// I TELL YOU IF YOU NEED EXTRA STORAGE YOU NEED TO BUY THIS ITEM IT WORKS WONDERS, THE ONLY THING YOU HAVE TO REMEMBER WHEN YOU WANT TO USE THE MANY MODES TO THIS ITEM IS MAKE SURE YOU READ AND UNDERSTAND THE DIRECTIONS BEFORE YOU START TO INSTALL BECAUSE SOME OF THE DISCRIPTION ARE NOT CLEAR, BUT LIKE I SAID I WOULD RECOMMEND TO ALL TO BUY THIS ITEM THE FAN WORKS GOOD,I HAVE THE UNIT ON TOP OF MY FULL TOWER NEXT TO MY EXHAUST FAN AND IT DOES NOT GET HOT WHAT SO EVER.BUY BUY BUY!!!!!!!!!!

Comment:
This is a SATA enclosure and if you use it for that you will find it to be excellent in every way. There is nothing cheap, flimsy or difficult about it. This is the way an enclosure should be made and now I realize my other similarly priced enclosures are actually trash. I use it to recognize two separate drives, but apparently you can program it to run various RAID configurations. I'd buy it again in a heartbeat.

Comment:
Great product so far. I'm able to get around 33mb/s transfer over USB and around 120mb/s over eSATA. I use it for media storage for my Western Digital HD TV and it works great so far.As long as the RAID doesn't get corrupted from connecting between my computer and my media player and I don't loose everything off the drives I'll be happy (*fingers crossed*)

Comment:
Great enclosure. Slightly pricey, but well made. USB-only model less than half the cost. Small fan doesn't move much air but aluminum transfers the heat very well. Nice to have both ESATA & USB, one to backup the other.

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Absolutely fantastic solution for redundancy. I have RAID 1 working on it with 2 - 500G WD Green drives. Had been looking for an external solution like this for a long time! No longer worried about my personal data being lost...

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I have two WD5001ABYS installed. Linked by E-sata to main box which has an Asus P5KE so the drives can be recognized separately. So far has worked flawlessly.

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I totally agree with JTO168.Using this with 2 x Western Digital RE2 RAID Edition 500GB SATA2 7200RPM 8.9MS 16MB NCQ Hard Drives (Raid 1 Mirroring). It's working great.

Comment:
This is a great dual drive enclosure that is designed very well. The shell is aluminum allowing heat to dissipate to keep the drives cool. The front of the enclosure has vents to allow air to be drawn in to cool the interior. There is a rear fan to keep the drives cool to the touch, which is another good design cue.The drives can be configured as JBOD, individual disks, and RAID 0/1. The RAID is hardware controlled, and is easy to configure by setting the switches inside the enclosure for either JBOD, individual, or RAID 0/1. Windows will recognize the disk(s) immediately as I had no issues with two disks configured as individual disks. I later setup two other disks as a RAID 0 array, and it was recognized immediately.Transfer speeds are very fast over eSATA and genrally fast over USB2.0.The new MX 2 enclosure also includes an eSATA connector for devices with eSATA ports. If your SATA controller has a port multiplier, you can set the MX 2 to have your drives operate as individual disks and you can hotswap. The standard USB2.0 connection is also available.The Vantec MX2 NST-400MX-SR is a great dual drive enclosure that puts your SATA2 hard drives to good use.