VantecNexStar 3 NST-360SU-BL 3.5-Inch SATA to USB 2.0 and eSATA External Hard Drive Enclosure (Midnight Blue)

... is the fact that it spins down the drive for its "power saving" feature after much too short a time! Can't they make this time selectable with firmware or something? Sure, it's great to save power and all, but the way it's factory configured makes the enclosure junk!If I am watching a movie stored on the drive, and I pause it for a few minutes, it spins down. Side effect? When I press play again, the video lags (while the drive spins up), but the audio keeps going. Then for a few long seconds, the video will suddenly go really fast to catch up to the audio! ANNOYING!!!Also, when I plug it into my DVD player with USB input (for DIVX and related content), the spin-down time does something worse: it causes the DVD drive to revert to the DVD player's USB menu if the drive spins down while it's paused! I have to find the video, resume playback, and skip back to where I was all because I paused it "too long." Totally unusable for watching videos on my big TV this way!Further, the spin-down means that if a piece of software is parsing the USB drives for any reason, I get this pause where my OS freezes (in all versions of Windows I have tried it on, up to Win 7 Ultimate x64) while the drive spins back up. Sometimes this happens ALL THE TIME when operations are happening (like whenever I want to open or save a file in some piece of software, even if not accessing the NexStar!), costing me several seconds each and every time. Sure, I can look the other way, but I just want it to work seamlessly, like it's an internal drive (like my other external drives do).Plus, constantly spinning up and down a hard drive wears it out MUCH faster than continuous operation (it has to do with heating/cooling the parts, and the fact that inertia helps keep things going when it's already spinning). So any savings you might experience in the short term by reduced power usage from spinning down the drive will likely be offset (and more) by having to buy a new drive sooner rather than later (although my 1Tb drive in there has not failed...yet).The above said, I really wanted to like this enclosure, and I have given it ample time for me to get used to it (over a year). It's sleek, gets slightly warm (a good thing meaning it has good thermal transfer), never crashes or loses drive enumeration with the OS (even on a USB hub with other drives that do), and is well-made.I will keep looking though because of its fatal flaw...Edit: I found a work-around for Windows. I now use the free (donation-ware) software NoSleepHD to keep the drive from sleeping (NOTE: Must run it as an Administrator, or it won't work!). It writes to a text file every 1 to 15 minutes (you choose how long) to keep the drive from sleeping. Works for the Windows environment (at least) if set to 1 minute, but not for my DVD with USB. Oh well, I just use a flash drive for that now anyway...

Due to every fault of my own I wound up having to send this Vantec enclosure back. The fact is that I got confused and simply bought the wrong case. In all fairness to Vantec this enclosure appeared to be very well made.The truth is the simplest way to handle ordering one of these enclosures is to call Vantec customer service or tech support. This is something that I did after I bought the case and then wished that I had done it before.The Vantec customer service technician was very easy to work with and the whole process was very quick. He simply asked me for the model number of the hard drive that I wanted to put into the enclosure.I gave it to him and in seconds he was able to tell me what case I was supposed to get and of course, the one I got was wrong. Unfortunately I spent about an hour with this enclosure trying to figure out how it was going to work with my 2 1/2 inch hard drive after I put it in an adapter cradle that I bought from Silverstone.The hard drive was a Western Digital "My Passport Elements SE" 1 TB. What it all comes down to is my lack of doing the research I should have done more carefully before quickly snatching up what I thought I needed.All that said, this enclosure is a very well-made enclosure and I strongly recommend it. I was impressed with its craftsmanship and ease-of-use. And the customer support was very good as well. In the future, I have no doubt I will once again look to Vantec for enclosure when I need one.

I haven't had any of the problems that other people noted with this. The case itself never gets more than warm and after taking the drive out after a few minutes of use, the hard drive itself was not hot (and contrary to one review, there were several points of contact between the drive and mounting bracket and the case). I've had no problems with lack of power either with a 7200 RPM Seagate Barracuda 500 GB drive. No problems with installation. I bought this to replace a more expensive enclosure that had a fan in it. The fan collected tons of dust in areas that were difficult to clean, which may have led to its failure. The only issues I have with this are minor. The power supply connector is rather tight; it takes more effort than it should to unplug it from the back of the unit. The power cable is on the short side - only about 3 ft The eSATA cable that it came with was crap - the connectors weren't very good, the insulation was thin, and it broke after about 2 days, luckily I had a better cable on hand. If it weren't for the crappy cable, I'd probably give it 5 stars.

I recently purchased this enclosure and hooked it up using the eSata. I love the speed and it is working as advertised. It seems to get a bit hot when left on for extended periods. Now I only turn it on when I need it and it working like a charm. Installation was very easy and it worked right out of the box. Recommended if you don't need to leave it on 24/7/365 and want the speed of eSata.

This model does NOT come with the SATA to eSATA Bracket as stated in the Amazon description. The bracket is listed as part of the package for this unit as well as the Vantec NexStar 3 NST-360SU-BK External Hard Drive Enclosure (black). Not sure if the bracket is all that important but the product is not as advertised. The enclosure works just fine with no overheating problems. I now have four, two running eSATA and two running USB2 interfaces.