Vantec Mrk-250St Ez Swap Ex 2.5 Serial Ata Hard Drive Sata To Sata Usb 2.0

by Vantec

Product Details

• Item Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000VK8ZDS
• Item model number: MRK-250ST
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: April 2, 2004

Product Description

The Vantec 2.5?Internal/External HDD Enclosure gives you the flexibility to bring your storage with you quickly and easily without having to deal with numerous cables. When at home, just insert the enclosure into the rack and you will instantly have a high speed SATA connection to your drive. 營f you need to take it with you, just eject the enclosure, grab the included USB cable, and you抣l still have access to all of your data while on the road.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Good Idea, only for Some Users, November 17, 2007

By 

Black, no Sugar (Wash, DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vantec Mrk-250St Ez Swap Ex 2.5 Serial Ata Hard Drive Sata To Sata Usb 2.0 (Personal Computers)

This unit is pretty nicely made, although the hard drive mount does rattle annoyingly inside the enclosure. The supplemental USB power wire is separate from the main USB cable, so if you don't need extra power you don't have that extra wire left dangling. The enclosure's connector is a standard mini-USB, so you can use a different cable if you want to.

Caution: Despite Vantec's advertising, this enclosure IS NOT HOT-SWAPPABLE in itself. It relies on being plugged into a third-party SATA controller that supports hot-swapping. If you do not have this controller you must restart your computer whenever you insert or eject the enclosure from the SATA tray. Ejecting the drive will freeze your computer. (I consider this a major flaw and would not have bought it if I had known.)

Do not try to mount the rack in an empty 3.5 inch drive bay if the face plate of the bay is recessed deeply in the front of the computer case. The drive enclosure does not eject far enough to grasp with your fingers unless there is ample clearance around the opening

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very versatile, May 18, 2010

By 

C. Rinker "'nar" (Ga United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Vantec Mrk-250St Ez Swap Ex 2.5 Serial Ata Hard Drive Sata To Sata Usb 2.0 (Personal Computers)

I got two of these about a year ago, one SATA, one IDE. I use them for connecting various laptop drives to my work PC for service, using the same bay. Honestly, the only issue I've had was with my SATA controller, there is no fault with this device. Hot swap is fine when the chipset supports it, and it must be AHCI, and no open files. If you want USB drive like functionality, it starts there. FAT32 would be advisable as well for hot swaps, though I feel that that has more limitations than benefits and stick to NTFS.

Many SATA controllers that run Windows XP were setup in IDE mode in the motherboard BIOS, not AHCI(Advanced Host Configuration Interface). This is due to legacy compatibility, since the XP install CD cannot recognize AHCI controllers. Even when "safely remove hardware" doesn't work(it says that it requires a reboot), I can usually just pull out the drive anyway without any issues. That error is usually caused by a program running that is still accessing the drive. If some important process is still accessing the drive, you can still get a system hang if your not careful.

These do get hot sometimes, sometimes nearly too hot to handle. But I run intense scans and defragment for hours and have not had a heat issue yet.

If these were made to fit bare drive hot swap bays, that would be desirable, but I am not sure what our issues that may cause. It certainly would not work in a 2.5" slot, and it would not be snug in a 3.5" slot. I'd just be happy if they came out with a SATA 6.0/USB 3 version, not that SATA 6.0 would be a benefit to a single HD, but for an SSD? :D!!! And if they replaced the screws with clips. They hold the drive securely, but I am constantly swapping drives. And since I am not traveling with these, I do not secure the drives to the PCB anyway. I am concerned about stripping those screws by over use.

I started with XP Pro, and I am currently running Windows 7. I've also replaced my motherboard and had a Rosewill PCIe SATA card for this in the past.

3.0 out of 5 stars Many promises, average on delivery, May 13, 2010

By 

Imre Oliver KOZAK "bioengineer, MSc, PhD" (Hungary) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Vantec Mrk-250St Ez Swap Ex 2.5 Serial Ata Hard Drive Sata To Sata Usb 2.0 (Personal Computers)

I bought the Vantec EZ-SWAP EX 2.5" about a year ago, and use it since then with a Samsung HM500LI 500GB 5200rpm 2.5" hard drive, in the 5.25" bay in my desktop PC (Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3 motherboard, Windowx XP).

My idea was to use the SATA speed when at home, which can be double of the USB speed, and have the universal connectivity of the USB for uses on other computers, when SATA is not available. I mainly planned to use the drive with Acronis Trueimage Backup, to make 1:1 backups of the system drive, and with IdleBackup, to make incremental backups of my documents folder.

In theory, this is a great idea, in practice, I had problems (see below "I didn't like"). My motherboard has two types of SATA connectors: yellows are part of the chipset, purples are Gigabyte's own SATA controller. These latter feature hot-swapping, and SATA drives can be plugged in and removed like a USB pendrive.

SATA was fast when reading, up to 50-60 MB/sec, however for writing, probably due to the Samsung hard drive, speeds were around 25 MB/s, sometimes going up to 50-60 MB/s, but don't know why. Unfortunately, Acronis Trueimage Backup was not able to "validate" backups made onto the drive when connected via the 3.5 bay's SATA interface. Even when I created a sucessful backup on one of my other harddrives, and successfully validate them, after copying over to the Vantec EZ-Swap, validation failed. I didn't check whether this is related to the EZ-SWAP or to the Samsung drive.

The USB feature worked well, however I didn't use it much yet.

To prevent overheating, I had removed the metal cover and cut out the bottom of the 3.5" bay enclosure, unfortunately the drive still gets very hot.

To avoid the drive rattling in the metal enclosure, I used paper inserts cut from post-it notes to stiffen the drive.

The drive was hot-swappable in Windows XP at the beginning, but for some reason, it is not hot-swappable anyomore. I don't have the energy to troubleshoot, so I just keep on using it with reboot. Hopefully, under Windows 7 this problem will be gone.

I liked:

- bay works well and smoothly, the whole has a similar feel like using a cartridge

- interface on the 2.5 enclosure is a standard SATA plug, can be used with standard SATA cables

- possibility to add external power when on USB, and USB is weak on power

- can be fitted to both 5.25 and 3.5 spaces on the desktop

- package full with accessories (cables, soft case, mounting adapters for 5.25/3.5)

I didn't like:

- was hot when in the 5.25" bay

- hard drive had some play in the 2.5 enclosure with a clicking sound - needed folded paper to stop moving

- I needed to reboot to plug-in / eject

- LEDs are too bright for my liking, used black marker to darken the LEDs

- the 2.5" enclosure itself doesn't fit into SATA docking stations (the SATA connectors are good, but the enclosure's dimensions are slightly different from a 2.5" harddrive, for ex. Thermaltake Sata HDD USB Docking Station

- hot-swappable SATA controller needed (check your motherboard and operating system), not all SATA controller's have this feature under Windows XP (maybe Windows Vista or 7 is better)

Now, I am thinking to stop using the bay-SATA feature, and only use the drive over USB. This is because I have to reboot anyway. So the concept is good, maybe another manufacturer has a better implementation, or an HDD docking station which has eSATA connection.

Thermaltake BlacX eSATA USB Docking Station

Vantec NexStar NST-D100SU 2.5-Inch/3.5-Inch SATA to USB 2.0 and eSATA Hard Drive Dock (White)

Thermaltake ST0002Z Max 4 2.5-Inch Dual SATA HDD Rack

--

Update (Dec 2010):

Now I use Windows 7, and had set AHCI for the SATA ports on the motherboard. This way the plug and unplug feature works well, it shows up like a USB pendrive in Windows Explorer.

The hardware issues (heat, loose fit, too bright leds) remain. So it works, but it isn't the quality I expected for the price.

I modified the stars from two to three.