Vantec Nexstar 3 3.5IN eSATA USB2.0 SATA Blue Aluminum Hard Drive Enclosure W/ Power Adapter

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This is a good aluminum case, dissipates heat well and has e-sata.Power connector requires too much force to plug in or remove- could break the board someday.The drive isn't bolted down and can rattle inside- perhaps causing vibration noise.E-sata cable boot needs trimming to fit some pcs.Apparently the drive doesn't spin down ever- this is not good if its plugged in all the time. I can't confir m this yet- but be aware. This review was modfied by poster @ 01-19-08 03:20 PM

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I think it's great, I originally looked for an external hard drive, looked at a NAS, I think it is the best bang for the buck. At $30 (on sale) can't beat it.Flexible, can put whatever size drive in.Great to backup computer then move to storage.Woot!

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Good Drive enclosure i have 2 blue and the orange one, all side by side running 500gb sata2 drives and things stay warm, leds light up the room at night lol. no problems at all, very durable units for transportation & these things will take a can of pop being spilled on them

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Works well with my Samsung SATA drive. Installation is easy, just slide the drive into the SATA port and power which are fixed, put some screws, slide the drive in, put the last screws, done.I couldn't get eSATA to work yet. Windows recognizes it, but all the transfers are corrupt. This is probably because of some driver issues, which I haven't dealt with yet. USB 2.0 worked just fine, so I stuck with it. Other than that, it's a beautiful enclosure.

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This enclosure was very easy to install and work flawlessly since its installation back 1 year. I'm very satisfied with it and will purchased again if i have the need to. Also recommend to anyone !!!

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I own both the black and blue enclosure. The blue one look great ! Work with WD 320gb, WD 500gb and Hitachi 750gb disksMake a great backup and go solution in my case.I agree with this other reviewer: "The screws and screw holes are kind of shady and both can be stripped pretty easily"One of my HD is a bit shaky inside the enclosure. Nothing to worry about, but the noise when moving it is quite annoying and dont make this unit look pro. It happens on only one of my enclosures, the other one feel rock solid. Fast USB 2.0, didnt used eSATA yet.

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love this enclosure. the footprint overall is about half the side of my wd enclosure. it seems to shed the heat fine.i've seen some comments about the heat as it does not appear to be vented, but aluminum transfers the heat out nicely. my vented wd plastic enclosure and the vantec enclosure both are operating at 36C at an ambient temp of 22C, both drives are well within spec. the instructions are decent. i've read about a few issues..one is something about a power connector not being correct and frying someone's drive. the only power connector that could be improperly mounted unless there has been a design fix is for the led and there is no way that should fry a hard drive. it is labelled incorrectly in that it shows the word white beside the red wire picture and red beside the white wire picture. looking down, the white wire should be closest to the edge of the tray and that works fine. there has also been some complaint that an sata 2 drive won't run as sata 2. either that's a hd drive issue or again, a design change was made as my maxtor sata 2 drive runs without issue in sata 2 mode in this enclosure. the price was great , the enclosure looks great and appears to be well made. i'm very happy and would highly recommend this enclosure. i'm only giving it 4 instead of 5 stars due to the picture error on the power led wiring diagram and vantec's lousy website for support info.

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Just got my second one of these Vantec external cases. One has a 320 Seagate SATA and the other has a 500GB Seagate SATAII. I'm using eSata for both. They work great! The blue version of this case has a wall-wart power adapter while the black one has a laptop style power adapter. I prefer the laptop style but it isn't a functional issue.Overall awesome enclosures!

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I purchased this because I was out of 3.25" slots and out of sata ports. This drive enclosure worked on the first boot up and it is also faster then I expected with USB2. For Christmas I went home and tried connecting this to my old p4 with USB1, although it did detect it and let me access the file it made the computer very unstable and very frequently would cause application to stop responding. But it does work perfectly with usb2.

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Just got it with a new WD 750Gb.Detection went flawless in XP Home using USB 2.0.I formatted and, using USB 2.0, I transfered a 1.4Gb file in 45 seconds.I stopped my PC, connected it with E-Sata and rebooted. It was detected as the same drive (E:).I transfered another 1.5Gb file in 30 seconds.It looks great. it works great, not much to add.

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use 2 of these with 2 seagate 320gigs over usb, havent yet tried the esata, great enclosures, although they can run quite warm during extended use.

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Picked up this enclosure recently and dropped in a spare SATA2 drive 250GB. Great little enclosure but I can't speak for the eSata use, only USB2 for myself. The screws and screw holes are kind of shady and both can be stripped pretty easily. Otherwise, it works perfect for backups and offline storage, very recommended.

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This enclosure looks good and runs good. The only complaint I have is that the hdd doesn't appear to spin down when it's connected but not in use. This results in the drive becoming hotter than neccessary and detracts from my overall satisfaction with the purchase. I know it's the enclosure that is causing this because my Seagate Freeagent enclosure connected to the same computer does spin down when it's not in use, leaving it significantly cooler overall.

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The case has a pretty nice finish with a nice blue activity LED. The ability to plug it with USB2 or eSATA is nice and Linux had no problem at all with the chipset. The 500gb Western Digital was fully recognized even it I formatted the drive with NTFS. The power supply is well design and won't block other outlets on a power strip. The only thing I regret is that we can't mount the drive on a wall or under a desk. I would recommend it.

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I have nothing to complain about. It looks solid, and shock resistent. it's quite heavy compared to the nGear ones. So I 'd reccomend it to people that have a little bit more cash :)

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This thing works perfect with the WD 500 gig drive I threw in. USB mode with either MAC OSX, and Windows XP have no problem seeing it. I haven't tried eSATA , and probably won't since I'm using this as a network drive hooked up to a router. The blue metallic finish looks sharp but is a finger print nightmare. The blue LED Vantec logo that doubles as the HDD activity indicator might be bright at night. The back panel where you plug in the power or USB has some flex when plugging in the power cord which is tight, so plug in carefully. The HDD fits into the tray snug and is secured by 4 standard screws. The wires are short and have to be really pulled and bent over to make connection, but shouldn't be a problem. The LED wire is idiot proof and looks just like a typical mo-bo connection. The HDD and tray slide back into the case and are secured by 2 very small screws that screw into the case. The screw holes are 3/4 round holes for the screw to grab onto. I could easily see these things getting stripped easily after one to many HDD swaps. The case has no ventilation holes or fans, so it gets pretty warm. The plastic base to stand the unit on it's side has no rubber feet on it, but the case itself does if you choose to just lay it flat on a desk.Comes with all cables you need to get ya going and the power cord has the typical huge "brick" on the end with a small green LED to indicate power.4 well deserved stars for looks and the fact everything just worked the first time. This review was modfied by poster g 08-06-07 01:29 PM This review was modfied by poster r 08-06-07 01:43 PM This review was modfied by poster z 08-06-07 01:36 PM This review was modfied by poster @ 08-06-07 01:37 PM

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Nice hardware, really easy to setup, I get transfer speed around 20mb/sec with the usb 2.0 cable (WD 250 go 16Mb in the enclosure and WD 160go 8MB in the computer) I consider this acceptable for a backup hard drive. I can watch movies from this hard drive without any lag. I recommend it.

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I am very impressed with this unit. Not only does it look awesome, but it performs well to match it. I especially liked the idiot proof LED connector. The only problem I ran into was the way I had to bend the power/data cable to get it to fit on the hard-drive (WD 500gb), and a slightly longer power cable would have been nice.

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The material and the design reflect the price tag, which is a fair bit more expensive than other lower quality enclosures. It gets hotter than I expected; although it's slightly warm if the drive is idling, but after 20 mins of file copying it gets quite hot.

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Good stuff -> I put my Seagate 500g in here, and it's been working well. The unit is keeping the HD cool enough to run for continuous work, and hasn't caused any problems. Simply plug and play into Win XP, and it took off like a charm. Within moments, I had formatted + partitioned without ever needing a driver CD or manual.

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Put my 500 Gig Seagate in here and it works great. Doesn't get to hot and looks amazing. Speed is good(usb) but I can't speek for E-sata operations. Takes an extra 20 seconds to get the internals all lined up but nothing major. Oh, did I mention it looks great?

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Excellent enclosure, does exactly what it should do, and for $50 it damn well better heh. The design is sleek and is visually appealing. The only thing I can ponder a complaint about is the fact that the cooling really blows. Well, blows in the sense that it doesn't. Okay well, the cooling is hot! well... that doesn't work either... The cooling doesn't work very well!

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Simply great little product the price is a tad high but thats the only complaint, is a nice sytlish design and does what its supposed to. very good.

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One of the best external hard drive enclosures. Very pleasing to the eye. The performance of the controller is good and you can use eSata instead of USB2 to increase the speed.

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This drive enclosure is perfect! I use it with eSATA on my computer at home and with USB2 when I'm on the road. I bought it together with a Seagate 500GB. It has a great look on my desk! The only problem I think of is that it has no fan for cooling. Highly recommended!