If you’re looking for a slim compact SATA drive enclosure, the Vantec NexStar MX is one to consider! Vantec has hit a homerun with this simple, easy to use 2 drive enclosure. The enclosure is barely thicker than 2 drives stacked on top of each other, and only slightly longer. The enclosure is designed to operate as 2 separate drives, or as one larger JBOD drive.
The NexStar MX unit comes with the following useful features:
- Supports 2 SATA I/II Hard Drives Up to 2.0 TB of Total Storage
- USB 2.0 External Interface Allows You to Transfer Data Up to 480 Mbps
- Front Ventilation and Rear Fan for Better Air Circulation and Cooling
- Stylish Aluminum Case to Draw Away the Heat
- Easily Add Up to Two Independent Hard Drives
- Supports JBOD Configuration; Turn Two Hard Drives into One
- Simple Plug & Play Connection; Does Not Require Drivers
- Arcsoft Totalmedia Backup™, Archive Photos, Music, Video and Data with Three Easy Clicks
Specifications
| Model | NST-400MX-SR |
| Modes Support | Individual/JBOD/RAID 0/1 |
| Device Support | 3.5″ SATA I/II Hard Drive (two) |
| Device Size | 3.5″ |
| Internal Interface | Serial ATA |
| External Interface | USB 2.0/eSATA |
| HD Capacity | Up to 2TB |
| Power Supply | AC Adapter |
| Material | Aluminum |
| Dimensions | 197 x 123 x 72 mm |
With the prices of storage media coming down, it’s easy to come up with a couple of extra hard drives that you can put to good use. The NexStar MX will easily allow you to expand storage onto your computer via USB. If you’re using a product like Windows Home Server, you can use this drive to easily expand your Server Storage.
A Walk Around the Unit
The front panel provides you three simple LEDs, two for hard drive activity and one for power. On the back of the unit, you’ll find: power switch, fan, USB connector and the power connector. The total size of the unit is not much larger than the size of the 2 actual hard drives. The nice black aluminum finish makes this an easy addition to a workspace.
As with most USB Drive enclosures, the NexStar MX is also very easy to install, all of the newer operating systems (Windows XP, Vista, 2003, 2008, OSX and Linux) have the native drivers built in to support this hard drive enclosure.
In addition to the native hard drive support, Vantec provides software called Arcsoft Totalmedia Backup with the enclosure.
The NexStar MX does not include a 1 Touch Backup option on the actual enclosure, however many of the backup software programs allow you to target a specific drive for backup. They also usually allow you to start the backup via software.
While the NexStar MX is a nice compact design, I was a little disappointed in the hardware installation process. While for many of you this may not be a sore point, but for me it’s becoming more important to have toolless designs. The NexStar MX is held together with 4 screws, after opening up the enclosure, you must then install the 2 drives with 4 screws each. After sliding and screwing in the 2 drives, you then have to screw in the 4 screws to shut the enclosure. This is a total of 12 screws, while this may not seem like a big deal, I’d really like to have a design that requires little to no tools so I could easily change drives or add drives at a later time.
That all said, the enclosure itself has a nice solid feel. This enclosure is built well, I feel safe knowing my drives are well secured and protected.
After inserting your hard drives into the enclosure, you are ready to power it up and connect it to your PC.
JBOD vs. Single Drive Mode
I discussed the disadvantages of JBOD in my last article. I’m happy to report that the NexStar MX supports BOTH JBOD or Single Drive Mode. In Single Drive Mode, the NexStar MX will show 2 drives to the operating system with a single USB cable.
The NexStar MX Enclosure performs on par with most other USB 2.0 Hard Drive Enclosures. OCmodshop uses Simpli Software’s HD Tach RW, with this tool we are able to do a complete and thorough read write analysis of the drives performance.
For my setup, I am testing the Enclosure with 1 drive in Single Drive Mode and 2 drives in JBOD Mode. In Single Drive mode, I wanted to see if the enclosure is on par with most other enclosures. In JBOD mode, I wanted to see if the enclosure had any performance hit in relation to the JBOD functionality. I was impressed with the results to realize that there is next to no performance hit!
Power Consumption
Power consumption is becoming important as we are starting to see better awareness on power consumption and what we can do to reduce our power foot print. OCmodshop tests power consumption by using a P3 Kill A Watt device which is able to provide us exact numbers on the power consumption of the unit. The NexStar MX enclosure itself does not require much power, with most of the power consumption being the actual drives. I have provided a breakdown of the power consumption below. The hard drives used for testing are Western Digital Caviar SE SATA Drives.
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For numbers sake a Mac Mini take 30 watts to run at full power, and the new Dell Inspiron 530s takes 60 watts with 1 hard drive.
The NexStar MX is a well built compact drive enclosure that provides a great deal of value for the price. The primary value I see in this enclosure is the Single Drive mode and JBOD mode support, Compact Size and its appealing design.
The 2 things that I didn’t like about this enclosure are the Installation (12 Screws) and the Noisy Fan. We do not have a dB meter to come up with an exact number for how loud the fans are, but if I cannot hear the random access of the drives over the fan, it’s too loud for me. single power supply and USB cable are a big plus.
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