Date: May 29, 2007 - Author: Greg King
As NAS is becoming ever more popular, many are looking for the best bang for the buck. That's where Vantecs $60 unit comes into play. Although it offers IDE support only, it proves to be quite a solid offering.
With hard drive prices dropping more and more each and every day and the capacity only going up, the GB per dollar ratio invites an ever-increasing number of people into the world of external storage. With the prices dropping, the last few years have seen a shift in portable storage.
Before, if you wanted to transfer large amount of data from one PC to another, the sneaker-net approach was used by burning as many files as you could fit on a CD-R and physically taking that disk to the other PC. While the premise is the same, with an external hard drive, you can now carry hundreds of gigabytes of information whereas to carry the same amount of data could require the use of dozens of blank disks. Connecting either by USB or FireWire, external hard drives offer not only mobility, but also quick transfer speeds.
Outside of portability, another use of an external hard drive is backing up data. With one PC being used, the user can simply plug the hard drive into an available FireWire or USB port and drag and drop any and all data that needs to be backed up. This is a perfect approach for single users but what if your apart of a network and you need the storage space available for every user?
While the argument can be made that a user can easily share the drive even if it’s connected by USB, this ultimately requires the host PC to be turned on in order for others to access the drive. If the host PC is a notebook or a personal computer, one might be turned off by a USB drive.
If your needs are as such, a network attached storage device is right up your alley. NAS boxes are simply external hard drives that connect to a network through CAT5 instead of USB or FireWire.
One such device that can be used either as an external USB hard drive, or as a network attached storage device is the Vantec NexStar LX. With both a 10/100 Ethernet jack and a USB port, the versatility of the NexStar LX is immediately noticed. Armed with both, how does the NexStar LX perform and even though it’s priced well under $100 (US), is it worth your money? Let’s find out.
Vantec has decided to ship the NexStar LX in a colorful and informative box. With pictures of the device and plenty of information about the enclosure and what it can be used for, the packaging is well done and not too over the top.
Once out of the orange sleeve, the NexStar LX is securely packed away in…. another box! This box, lacking the flair of the outer cover, simply opens at the front and the top is folded back.
Once inside, each component has it’s own compartment to eliminate any damage that could be done by the parts knocking around in the box during shipment.
Vantec has provided all of the required accessories to get the NexStar LX up and going as quickly as possible (hard drive not included). With a manual, USB driver disk for computers still running Windows 98, USB cable, power cord and power brick, an Ethernet cable, hard drive mounting screws and thermal probe tape, the NexStar is good to go right out of the box.
Moving onto the unit itself, the NexStar LX is square in shape and roughly the size of a CD or DVD drive. With the Vantec logo on the top, the LX is simple and to the point. The glossy black finish gives the LX an elegant appearance. If black isn’t your color, the NexStar LX is also available in Apple white.
On the front of the NexStar, there is a small row of clear plastic with LEDs on the inside. These indicate hard drive activity, power and network activity.
Moving around to the back of the device, we see a row of switches, ports and connections. The corners of the NexStar are rounded and the back two corners are perforated to allow the small fan to breath easier. Moving from left to right, the LX has an on/off switch, power port, fan speed controller using two dip switches, a 10/100 base network lack and a USB 2.0 jack that allows the NexStar LX to be used strictly as an external hard drive.
Located just above the row of connectors is an opening for the small cooling fan to pull in cooler air and use it to keep the internal space cool. The fan speed can be controlled by flipping a pair of dip switches.
On the bottom of the enclosure, there is a pair of large rubber feet. These do a fantastic job of absorbing any vibrations that might occur because of the hard drive and fan. In-between the rubber feet, there are four holes. These allow the hard drive to be bolted onto the bottom of the device.
On the bottom of the picture, as well as the top, towards the right side of the NexStar, there is a small opening. This opening allows a small screw driver to be slid into the enclosure to remove the top of the LX, granting access to the inside of the device.
The inside of the NexStar LX, in my opinion, shows one of it’s greatest shortcomings, but also, for some, one of it’s greatest advantages. With the top off, the first thing we noticed was the IDE ribbon. With the NexStar LX only supporting IDE hard drives, the majority of users using SATA drives will have to look past this device.
With that said, the NexStar LX is a great place to put an extra IDE drive that might be lying around not being used. In our case, we happened to have a Western Digital 120GB hard drive not being used.
With the entire back of the enclosure being dominated by the board, resting above it is a small cooling fan. This fan, as stated before, pulls cooler air from outside of the enclosure and pushes it around the inside of the LX. To aid in cooling, there is a large aluminum heatsink that the hard drive will rest on to help dissipate the heat away from the hard drive and out of the enclosure entirely.
With everything installed (and by everything, I mean the hard drive), its now time to put the cover back on the NexStar LX and get to testing. One thing that users will need to pay attention to is the IDE ribbon. It must be folded correctly in order for the rather flimsy feeling top to close correctly. While this isn’t anything major, it is something that needs to be done if your going to put the top back on the device.
Lets move onto installation and a look at the software.
With everything installed, we powered the NexStar LX on and connected it to the network with the provided Ethernet Cat5 cable. In our tests, we will be using the D-Link Xtreme N DIR-655 gigabit router. While the router is capable of gigabit speeds, the Vantec’s Ethernet adapter limits it to 10/100 speeds.
This is another shortcoming of the NexStar LX but in our opinion, not a major one. Once connected, to get into the web based menu, simply type "storage" into the address bar. This will bring up a user name and password window. By default, both the username and the password are "admin."
While not original, it’s easy to remember. Once logged in, the first page we see is the status page. Here we see the device’s name, the IP address, the firmware version and the hard drive information. We can also change the language that the menus will be displayed in as well as enabling the device to work as a DHCP server. Since our D-Link router already does this, we do not need to enable this feature.
On the second page, the ability to assign the NexStar LX a static IP address can be found here. As stated before, the D-Link router is setup to assign each new network device it’s own IP address via DHCP so this setting was set to automatic.
On the third page of settings, the ability to update the device’s firmware is available. There is also the ability to reboot the LX as well as restore the factory default settings should a setting change not jive well with the host network.
On the fourth page, we have the ability to setup a SMB server. SMB is an acronym for Server Message Block and is used to allow network nodes to communicate with each other as well as different PCs running different operating systems.. Microsoft makes great use of SMB and it is know simply as Microsoft Windows Network. Another example of SMB is Samba. On this page, this service can be setup if the user desires.
If your interested in setting up a FTP server (short for File Transfer Protocol), this option can be found on the fifth page. With FTP, a server can be setup to allow access to certain files from a remote location over the internet.
This is convenient for those who would like to easily access files on their home PC from work. While there are many uses for an FTP server, I simply use it to pull information off of my home PC while at work.
The final page of the setup gives the user the ability to format their hard drive, scan the disk for errors and set the NexStar LX to "sleep" after a certain amount of time.
While not robust, the web interface of the NexStar LX is easy to navigate and provides just enough options to make it viable for all but the most demanding of users. With its different abilities, the NexStar LX is quite suitable for home networks where file access is all that is really needed.
As the NexStar LX is both a USB external hard drive enclosure, as well as a network attached storage device, we will test the speed of both USB and Ethernet transfer speeds. To test the transfer speeds, a Windows XP .iso will be moved from the host PC to the NexStar LX. The file is 585 MBs and the time it takes to transfer over will be recorded. This will be done three times over Ethernet and three times over USB.
These times will be recorded in seconds and then averaged. The total average of time will then be divided into 585 MBs which will give us the MB per second transfer speed. Going into the testing, we already know that the USB is going to be above and away faster than when moving files around over the Ethernet lines.
Just looking at the numbers, its clear that if raw speed is what is needed, USB if certainly ideal. It’s the convenience of being able to plug the NexStar LX into your existing network that’s the key here. When we start to examine the finer details of the NexStar, it’s certainly a mixed bag.
On one hand, the LX is only has a 10/100 NIC. While this isn’t a huge deal, most NAS devices offer gigabit speeds. To counter that though, most NAS boxes aren’t selling for $60. Then there is the fact that it used IDE hard drives. SATA drives are far more popular now then IDE drives but that in no way means that nobody has IDE drives. I personally have 3 just laying around. All of varying sizes.
Most NAS devices are aimed at the power user and the small business owners while the Vantec is clearly marketed towards the everyday home users. The simple fact is that most households now have more than one computer. With more computers come the need for a router and it only makes sense in that situation to plug the NexStar LX into the router, making all of the data stored on the NAS easily accessible.
Taking everything into consideration, the Vantec NexStar LX earns an 8 out of 10. The NexStar LX would make a lot of sense for most as a simple external hard drive enclosure but for those who are only looking for a USB enclosure, I would recommend the NexStar3 that we reviewed early last year.
It simply looks better and installation was a cinch. I recommend the NexStar LX for anyone who is looking for an inexpensive network storage solution that can be used for quick transfers via USB. For those of you who need just that, Vantec’s NexStar LX is a sure bet.
If you have a comment you wish to make on this review, feel free to head on into our forums! There is no need to register in order to reply to such threads.
Copyright © 2005-2008 Techgage Networks Inc. - All Rights Reserved.