Vantec Model#Nst-250U2 Nexstar 2.5 Usb External Enclosure

Product Details

• Item Weight: 2.2 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• ASIN: B000233X1I
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: January 5, 2007

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Inexpensive, Attractive, Functional, February 24, 2005

By 

Josiah Schlender (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Vantec Model#Nst-250U2 Nexstar 2.5 Usb External Enclosure (Personal Computers)

I upgraded the hard drive in my laptop, and bought the Vantec Nexstar 2.5" enclosure for my old hard drive. The old drive fit right in. (9.5mm) A note for older laptop owners: this enclosure is very slim, and will not fit hard drives any thicker than 9.5mm.

The enclosure is an attractive grey aluminum, with a small green power LED that turns red when the drive is in use. The USB 2.0 cords work well, a main power cord, and a secondary USB cord to draw extra power from another USB if necessary. It comes with a "pleather" padded case. The enclosure also has an AC power adapter outlet, but does not come with the adapter. The enclosure has stayed cool with a Hitachi Travelstar 4200 RPM 30 GB hard drive in it.

I gave this product four stars because it lacks on the support side of things. The minimalist product manual helped a little, but didn't help me when I couldn't figure out how to format a hard drive in the enclosure. It was probably my lack of technical expertise, or a problem with the USB 2.0 PC card I just got, but the instructions could have been better. I have seen some enclosures come with software that will "clone" or "ghost" your existing hard drive. This one does not. If you are looking for that software, search for "hard drive clone" on download.com.

A note on installation: You will need a Phillips #0 (very small, eyeglass size) screwdriver to fasten the hard drive into the case.

Overall, I'm pleased with the product. A lot of power options, good looks, portability and cheap price are a great combination, even if the manual is lacking. Now I have a 30 GB external drive about the size of an iPod.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A brief explanation, February 19, 2006

By 

Jonathan Kennedy (Raleigh, NC USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Vantec Model#Nst-250U2 Nexstar 2.5 Usb External Enclosure (Personal Computers)

This is a great product, I highly recommend it. This is probably the smallest enclosure you can get. It means, however, that it has no real cooling system nor any shock protection incase you drop it or something. My family runs five of them (all with different hard drives) more or less continuously with no overheating problems. They never even feel remotely warm. Also, I've banged mine around a few times, but they kept on working. Installation is extremely easy; just slide the hard drive in and screw the end on. It comes with a special USB cord that lets it get power from two ports and still lets you plug a second low power device into the second port. It has a place to plug in an AC power adapter if you only want to plug it in to one USB port, but you have to go by the adapter on your own (specs in manual). If you try to run it off of only one USB port and no AC power the computer will cut the power to that port (to protect against surges) if power consumption exceeds USB standards during heavy hard drive usage.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great way to recycle old Notebook hard drives, October 5, 2005

By 

D. S. Kenny "CATXIR1" (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Vantec Model#Nst-250U2 Nexstar 2.5 Usb External Enclosure (Personal Computers)

This is a really smart piece of aftermarket engineering, it turns old notebook harddrives into really handy, very flexible USB storage devices, which work well on both a MAC and other operating systems. The only issue is when you are using it on A PC, it frequently causes an excessive power drain on the USB bus. There is a little socket for a power supply, but who wants to carry around yet another power supply. This problem never occurs on a MAC. Additionally, if you are migrating from one machine to another, you can pull the HD out of the old one and have all your files available to you if you, which is handy if you don't like to just copy everything over.