Vantec NexStar3 Enclosure

Have an old hard drive lying around? Perhaps you just hate the IDE ribbons or bulky sleeved ribbons that you have to use to connect that lonely hard drive up. Have you ever thought about turning it into an external hard drive?

/People with notebooks, take note.

For far to long, we have been forced to pay humongous premiums on external hard drives just because they are different from the normal internal HDD’s that we are so used to. The only real difference between the external and internal hard drives is the enclosure itself.

/Enter Vantec.

We all know Vantec, or at least have heard of them. They have been in the game for a long time now making superb cooling products. Their line now includes everything from basic case fans up to power supplies and cables. I have even recently reviewed a Vantec HDD cooler and that review can be found here.

Today, we are going to take a look at Vantec’s line of HDD enclosures. The model name is NexStar and the interface is SATA. I am going to see just how this thing works and along the way, see if it would be a practical purchase for anyone with an extra HDD lying around and a need to use that space.

The box came shipped in a regular brown box that any package of this size would be shipped in. Once removed, the NexStar packaging looks colorful and well done.

The colorful packaging comes with pictures, product specifications and descriptions as well as the package contents clearly labeled on the box itself. This is certainly something that would catch my eye when walking though a store.

The contents of the box are seen in the above picture. Everything comes wrapped in plastic and is nicely tucked into the box. Once opened, this is what I find.

Clockwise from the left: USB 2.0 cable, power cable, external SATA PCI bracket, power supply and the external SATA cable.