Vantec Nexstar 3 External 2.5IN eSATA Black Hard Drive Enclosure USB2.0

Comment:
I had this case for a month, it has done its job fine. I rather have perfomance than looks, but this case has both. I use it with my laptop and does not require external power just the USB. I have a 80G/5400rpm drive. It is about $10 more than the generic case, I plan to have it for a while so it was worth the extra 10$.

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I've only had it for a short while but it's been great so far. And note, the new Hitachi 200Gb/7200rpm SATA drive fits very nicely. Contrary to another comment here, you do need to provide the extra power (using a 2nd USB port) when you want USB2 or eSATA transfer speeds.

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Put a Seagate 7200.2 100GB in this case, and it has traveled all over Asia on several occasions, and is used daily between home and work. Has always worked perfectly and delivered. I have tried three others, but I think Vantec is the best for the dollar.

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very happy with the performance of product, so far so goodthe only thing i think could possible be improved is the color is USB cable, i bought the black version, wish the cables are black as well ;-)

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got it to get info from a corrupted hard drive. worked perfectly. comes with many extras, and the hard drive doesn't move around inside the case.

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I replaced my laptop's hard drive with a bigger one, and I installed the 160GB Hitachi drive in this enclosure. So far I am very satisfied. The eSATA interface works great, the drive is detected as a normal SATA drive at boot. I now run a dual-boot system, with FreeBSD on this drive and Vista on my laptop drive and it works great. The speed of the eSATA interface is amazing! This is really the main reason I bought it, also for the price this is a great buy. I couldn't care less about the USB2 interface after I saw the speed with eSATA.Contrary to the review below, you DON'T need a external power supply for eSATA operation. Just plug the dual usb cable AFTER you plug the eSATA cable like it says in the manual.Very happy! This review was modfied by poster @ 08-27-07 06:28 AM

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What can I say... this is the best enclosure I've ever owned.I would buy another without hesitation.Oh, and you don't need a power adaptor for eSATA if you have USB available: plug in eSATA first, then plug in USB. This is covered in the manual.

Comment:
Looks nice, but that's all. Has some nice little extras like a SATA-eSATA bracket for inside mounting and USB cable with 2 connectors. The Apple drive barely fits (height), others might not fit. Doesn't request power properly from the driver (just expects the 500mA to be there) and doesn't shut down the drive if no adequate power is availabe (just spin-up, spin-down). Crashes the Mac OS X driver if not properly inserted.

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I've tried a few 2.5'' SATA enclosures. This is probably the best. Many other eSATA/USB boxes were so poorly designed that they need extra 1 (or even 2) USB connection to provide extra power, which is a big hustle especially for laptops. Vantec's design can provide enough current to spin up even a 2-disk drive with a single USB bus. Speed is very good. Build quality is good too.

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Would be nice to have USB power like some cheaper enclosures, but still an awesome enclosure. Plan to buy 3.5" version for my desktop.

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This seems like a very nice device, EXCEPT my hard drive doesn't fit in it! Only the smallest, slimmest 2.5'' drive will fit. My Fujitsu MHV2160BT doesn't even come close! It works just fine... but it's useless to me! Beware!