Vantec NexStar3 Enclosure

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
We all know that keeping our components cool is the best way to prolong their life, and our Hard Drives are certainly no different. Vantec is offering us a great looking solution for our external drives, so let's jump right in.

Discuss the review here!
 

Jakal

Tech Monkey
That's an excellent price, especially with it supporting Sata. I've helped others out with external enclosures and they can be very pricey. I'm glad to see such well known brand step up and produce such a device without charging so much.

I'm interested in the transfer rates though. Seeing as it is Sata interface, I'm assuming a firewire or usb 2.0 connection, would provide great speeds.
 

Greg King

I just kinda show up...
Staff member
The pricing is wrong. The 3.5" enclosure is priced at $45 US. The price I quoted in the review was for the 2.5" enclosure, which is not what I reviewed. I appologise for the mix up and the review will be fixed asap.

Error aside, the USB 2.0 speeds are nice and I have yet to try the eSATA speeds. The only thing holding me back now is the short length of SATA cable that came with it. I will have to pull my tower out but oh well. I am curious now.
 
K

kev

Guest
is there enough room in the case to use an ide drive with an ide to sata converter board?

in particular, i was thinking of the abit serillel2 adapter but if anyone can suggest another adapter that can fit that would be welcomed.

in addition - can i convert the sata power to normal molex connector too - wasn't sure from the pic if this was a special plug in the vantec case

i wish to take advantage of the esata speeds but with my old ide drive that i have lying around.
 

Jakal

Tech Monkey
You can't increase the transfer speeds of an ide, no matter how hard you try. Sata speeds can't be transferred by just using a sata enclosure. If you've got an ATA-133 you won't be able to get SATA-1 speeds just because it's in a Sata case. If you want to pick up the enclosure just look around for a decent Sata hard drive. I got a 250G SATA-II for around $100, and the prices have dropped since then.
 
U

Unregistered

Guest
Question

I have this very enclosure and it worked great. I"m wondering how the SATA
port in the side of the enclosure works. Is there an adaptor that would allow me to connect another hard drive to the one inside the adaptor, and transfer data from the enclosure hard drive to another hard drive. I would like to "restore" the image (using Acronis True Image) I have on the enclosed hard drive, that is of 3rd hard drive, onto the 2nd hard drive, via the SATA port on the out side of the enclosure. I have this doesn't sound too confusing. My goal is to have an instantly accessable HD identical to HD number 3, which is a crucial hard drive for my work. Should this 3rd HD fail, I could just pop in the 2nd one, and go.

Any help
Thanks
tom

[UOTE=Jakal;8596]You can't increase the transfer speeds of an ide, no matter how hard you try. Sata speeds can't be transferred by just using a sata enclosure. If you've got an ATA-133 you won't be able to get SATA-1 speeds just because it's in a Sata case. If you want to pick up the enclosure just look around for a decent Sata hard drive. I got a 250G SATA-II for around $100, and the prices have dropped since then.[/QUOTE]
 
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