Great 5-in-3 Enclosure, Slight Issues with Reliability.
341908
I am using three of these, but have purchased 5. They do a great job of their intended purpose, but there are some quality issues with the hard drive ejection mechanism and the LEDs.

I have sent back two units already for failed LEDs. Some fail immediately, but others fail over time. The units never create issues with the drives or RAID subsystems so I'm not too worried.
3846015
With the consistently dropping prices in data storage over the past few years, online stores have become littered with 2.5" disk enclosures.  It's near impossible to even identify a good enclosure because they all look the same and have roughly the same reviews.  As of today, I've now been through 3 separate enclosures (for my 1TB SSD) and each have failed almost immediately after the return windows closed.  The enclosures all "look cool" at first but then some portion of the circuitry ends up failing which renders the drive useless.  I found myself scratching my head and wondering why it's so hard to manufacture a consistently functional enclosure.  After those 3 failures, I decided to test out this Sabrent cable and drop the idea of having a physical enclosure. I can say that this setup has been working flawlessly ever since I picked up the Sabrent.  I've had no issues in the first few months of ownership.  In conclusion, I highly recommend scrapping the idea of enclosures all together and consider making a custom one with this cable (and a trip to Home Depot).
3676101
I'm using this enclosure to house a WD20EARS 2TB 'green' drive. This particular configuration runs quite cool for a fanless enclosure, and it has both USB 2.0 and ESATA cables so overall, I'm happy with the purchase.

As has been pointed out in other reviews, fitting a 3.5" drive in this enclosure and hooking up the power and data connections is an adventure. The fit of a 3.5" drive is EXTREMELY tight and the included cables for connecting the drive to the enclosure are absurdly short. In one of the customer-uploaded images for this item, you can see how the SATA cable is very short, causing it to bunch up and it wants to protrude from the case. Mine was so short that the tension felt like it wanted to break the pins off my drive or the PCB in the enclosure when pressing the cable down so that the case could be closed. Also, in the case of a SATA drive, the power cable has to cross over the SATA connector, but it is too short to do so comfortably. It took me a good 15 minutes of fiddling to be able to get both the SATA and power cables connected, with a lot of cursing involved.

The tight fit and protruding cables means that opening the enclosure and swapping drives should only be done in the case of drive failure, and doing so may result in damage to the PCB or cables that come with the enclosure. This nearly fatal design flaw is very unfortunate, especially since the rest of the design is spectacular. Adding a mere centimeter or two to the power cable, and/or re-positioning the SATA connector, would have turned this (barely) usable case into a best-in-class one.
1697558
I like using these bays because I can install different operating systems on separate hard drives and then boot the computer with whichever one I want by sliding it into the rack.  They're also good for working with hard drives that are not running the OS since you can just slide in the drive and turn it on to get access.

I only gave 4 stars because I've had the power switches fail on two of them.  One stopped working after a couple years, but the first one I received for this order from Amazon arrived with the switch stuck "on".  As usual, Amazon made getting a replacement quick and painless.  The replacement rack is working fine but having switch problems with 2 of 3 units makes me feel the switch they use is just not as robust and reliable as it should be.
1890850
This is a great basic hard drive enclosure that is very quiet. I'm rating it 3 stars due to some issues encountered with various products. First, this won't work with DirecTV as an ESATA drive housing. Second, I was unable to install Windows 7 to a drive connected via ESATA installed in this enclosure.

It seems to turn off the hard drive when not in use. With respect to performance, there are no problems, and the case is well constructed. There is no fan, but after hours of use there was no great heat. The only noise is from the installed hard drive when it's seeking.

I wish there were fewer compatibility issues, but aside from these, the drive works as advertised. My 3 star rating is meant to be a middle of the road rating, not positive or negative. For me, this wasn't the best solution for my external drive enclosure needs.
1948900
I have had 4 of these Western Digital 500 GB USB 2.0 drives(and one also had the eSATA option).  I also have 3 of their 1 TB USB drives, and I've used 3 of their older 80 GB USB drives too.  As you can see, I've been pretty much a fan of this brand, but see below for some cautions.  I've found these to be very easy to use.  My experience has been that set up is 100% plug and play with Windows (XP).

One issue, be SURE if you are using this with a Windows based PC to reformat the drive to NTFS.  A FAT32 drive of this size in these days is just asking for problems (and I've seen problems on systems that were not re-formated to NTFS, such as issues with long file names, and files that are very large, ex: video files!).  You need to reformat the drive BEFORE putting any of your data on it.  You can use the quick-format option under Windows Explorer - and it will do this pretty quickly (minutes, not hours).

The second issue is that these have not lasted very long for me.  I don't know if the actual drive fails or if the enclosure fails, but I've had 3 of them go bad over a 3 or 4 year period of time.  Twice this happened while it was still under warranty and Western Digital's RMA process worked fine for me; they sent a new or refurb'ed one to me, and I send them theirs back (no charge to me).  This failure rate is odd to me, as I don't move these around - they are sitting on a desk top and never move (it's not like I bang them around in a back pack).

Bottom line, as one of the other reviews also said - use this as a backup drive, not as your ONLY primary drive!!

In my case, I have my primary data (and pictures and video's etc) on some internal and on some external drives.  I then have a separate 1 TB external USB drive that I use each night to back my primaries up to.  And then once a month, or more frequently if I'm adding lots of files, I back that 1 TB external drive up to a second 1 TB external drive that I keep in a fire-box.  This way, if the primary or backup gets fried, I still have the fire-box copy of all my stuff.  I use a product called, SyncBackSE, to handle the actual backup processes (it finds the changes and just copies those to the target).  It works pretty well for me.
4591990
I have used dozens of enclosures over the years. I was looking for a quick and simple enclosure for spare 2.5" disks that have been removed from laptops, or need to be cloned to replace the pre-existing drives. I paid a few bucks more for this one, hoping it was worth it. It most certainly is.

This is a fantastic design. Just slip a 2.5" rotating or SSD drive into the case and close the lid (Need to pay attention to the push button to close it). It just works. Like it should!

There are a couple minor flaws, but I still rate it 5 stars.
If your drive is thin, as are some SSD drives, the lever that pushes the disk out sometimes slips past the disk, and you need to manually remove the drive. When it works properly, though, simply opening the enclosure door pops out the drive automatically. Very simple to swap out drives with this enclosure.

The manual is mostly useless, but it is easy to figure out the supplied 3-prong USB cable has a smaller cable/connector built in to supply only power for when you connect with SATA. (SATA does not supply power to disks, so you must supply a power source if you connect the disk using SATA) I believe, but have not tested, that you can connect most any standard USB device charger to the box to supply power. SATA works and gives excellent throughput.

I have already recommended this enclosure to others and will pick up a couple more.
3048270
I purchased this case as part of my FreeNAS build. The case is a wonder; 8 standard HDD hot swap drive bays and 4 fixed SSD bays in a compact mini-ITX form factor. Because of the compact size space gets tight when building, but since this case is meant for server boards with little or no add-in cards it was fairly easy, even for a guy like me with fat butcher's fingers.
A couple of notes:
1. Be careful when removing the main hot-swap drive cage; the small screws along the top can stick, meaning they don't protrude when you unscrew them from the frame. It's crazy easy to strip them if you keep trying to unscrew them once they have released and are rotating freely. Have a needle-nose pliers ready to pull them out. I would have liked to see the case come with a few backup screws to accommodate this.
2. Be careful when pulling out the drive cage. The back of the cage has a bunch of capacitors and other semi-fragile electronics exposed (parts of the hot-swap hardware) and you can bend or break them very easily if you grip it wrong. Since the drives in this cage are not meant to be connected directly to the SATA data and power cables, and are not directly exposed from the back, this could be a game over-case destroyer.
3. Secure your cables carefully! The tight space means that unsecured cables can rub against the fans, creating noise and potentially bad things.
4. The magnetic screen on the side is irritating when picking the case up; it slides off very easily and is placed in a position where you naturally grip when lifting, causing it to slide around in your grip; I'd suggest removing it when moving and re-attaching after you set it down.
5. The manufacturers site lists their CPU water cooling as compatible. You could probably remove the front fan and install the radiator+fans there but it would be a TIGHT fit and I don't think I'd recommend it. Also, many server boards that you might buy with this form factor are SoC and have their cooling systems soldered onto the board, making it impossible to use an external cooling system: double check before buying to avoid wasting your money.
6. One weird thing I discovered: for each HDD drive bay on the hot-swap back-plane there appear to be two SATA ports. I'm not sure why, my wild guess would be for redundancy or something along those lines, but what I found was that the system did not recognize the drives unless the SATA cables were plugged into the port on the left. So for each bay, plug the cable into the left SATA port. This may very much be a YMMV situation, since I really have no idea what the second port on each bay is for.
All of this is pretty minor. For a NAS build this box is as close to perfect as I've seen. Once built this thing is a dream: small, powerful, and fairly quiet. I highly recommend it.
4414741
Well, I wanted to really take my time with this product because choosing a RAID enclosure is no small decision. Of course, losing your videos and music can really ruin your day, but when (like me) you have tens of thousands of irreplaceable photos of people's weddings, you don't take storage lightly. The enclosure has been running for a couple of weeks straight now, has been moved several times and taken with me on a couple of trips, so I think I can fairly evaluate it. Vantec sent me a copy of this enclosure to evaluate in exchange for an honest review.

IN THE BOX
- MX enclosure
- eSATA Cable
- USB 3.0 Cable
- Power adapter
- Instructions
- MX Stand

DESIGN/QUALITY
Well the first thing I want to talk about is the design and quality of build of this enclosure. Made mostly out of aluminum, I was surprised at the nice weight it has to it even without a drive or two in.  You may not want to believe this, but even though drives are rated for a certain amount of blunt-force shock, it's not unknown for a small knock to mess them up ESPECIALLY while in use. So it's important that you have a sturdy enclosure for that irreplaceable data. Not only does the weighty design keep this enclosure in place, but a simple plastic stand has been included which makes the whole thing almost impossible to knock over. The front of the enclosure has three LEDs - a light green one for power, and two blue LEDs to indicate hard-drive presence and activity. The HDD LEDs are a little too bright for my tastes, so I plan to replace them with low-brightness white LEDs (note: this will void all warranties). Also on the front are vents to allow air to pass through - though they don't have any sort of filter, they are small enough that you don't have to worry too much about dust getting inside. Speaking of airflow, moving to the back we do see that this enclosure has a 40mm fan drawing air out of the enclosure. It's a shame that the fan cannot be turned off by the user seeing as it is a little louder than I would have liked. I understand that RAID 0 needs good airflow for optimal performance and reliability, but it would be nice to have the option as we do with other Vantec products.

INSTALLATION
Absolutely a breeze. Remove four screws on the back and you slide out the metal drive cage. Screw down your hard-drives and slide back in! Really though, the days of difficult peripherals are mostly over, in my opinion. With SATA (data and power) being such a simple design, gone are the days where you have to forcibly insert a connector - just slide it in and go!

FUNCTIONALITY
Well, here's the good news: this enclosure is FAST. By using only USB 3.0 (2.0 compatible) and eSATA, you can be sure that you are transferring your data extremely quickly. I'm glad to see that firewire and USB 2.0 is being phased out - it's definitely time, and according to some experts, eSATA is not far behind. Still, I was very pleased with the transfer speeds.

Now, on to the important stuff; RAID. This drive is capable of running RAID 0 (performance), RAID 1 (direct mirroring) and even JBOD (single drive) mode, where it treats each drive separately. I am very happy with all three modes, easily changed by dipswitches found where you insert the drives. Once you have chosen your mode just power on, and press and hold the reset button for 5 seconds. Now, it is important to note that you hardware MUST support RAID for you to be able to use the RAID functionality. Happily,  most boards from around 2008 onwards have a RAID controller built in, so you should be good to go but it is wise to check compatibility before any purchase is made. The included instructions do a fantastic job of explaining how to choose modes, and unlike many instructions manuals out there, do so using correct English!

OVERALL
This is really a fantastic RAID solution for most end users. It is well made, easy to use and understand, and is a vital tool to anyone who values their data! Given a few of the pitfalls measured above, I would probably rate this at around 4.5 stars, but still highly recommend it!
3722075
The enclosure adopts a muted styling and I think it looks quite nice. The included USB 3.0 cable is a good length and the connectors seem of high quality. Of course, all that really matters is whether or not the drive is reliable. There were no issues out of the box but I'll update this review if anything catastrophic happens to the drive (knock on wood!).
1511313
While I must admit that I've had loads of problems with this particular model of Seagate drive (4 DOAs from another vendor and one that died after about 3 months of use), I must say that Amazon appears to have listened to complaints about packaging of OEM drives.  Mine arrived in it's static bag and properly secured using the plastic inserts that you find in retail packages.  Much better than the packaging at the other online company that just used bubble wrap (and often not enough of it).

About the drive.  When it's working, it's a good drive.  It's pretty quiet and the price for the capacity is still pretty good.  Given the checkered reliability record, I recommend having a spare drive on hand for any NAS/RAID array that you may be sticking these into.  Seagate is good about the RMA process (you still have to pay to ship the dead drive to them, but they pay the return shipping) in general, but to be without the drive for a week or more can be dicey in a RAID array.
413959
I had considered buying a less expensive device that would be powered by the USB port on my computer but I'm glad that I didn't.  This enclosure seems pretty durable and the included stand makes it quite stable in the upright position.  I've had it running for a couple of hours at a time and the built-in fan does a really good job of heat dissipation.
  I've swapped out several old hard drives. I would suggest that you have a small "snubby nosed" pair of pliers to grip the IDE connector when you pull it off the hard drive.  Otherwise, repeated swaps might eventually pull the ribbon cable loose from the connector
  The only problem I had with it is that the instruction booklet photos are microscopic.  It was frustrating to the point that I abandoned it.  After all, the IDE and power cables are self-evident.  What I didn't see was that the serial SATA connector was almost hidden beneath the IDE connector and I thought I was going to have to buy a SATA to IDE adapter to make the thing work.  I didn't.  It looked to be an impossibly tight fit, at first, but after a little manipulation, the SATA connector slipped right into place.  Makes transferring files a snap.
2074133
I love this enclosure. The aluminum leaches away heat amazingly. I use it as a passport drive for extra external storage on my PS3 and it works great. Any time I have a extra laptop HDD laying around I buy one of these and turn it into a passport drive. Lets face it, with technology being what it is today and will become in the future, you can never have enough storage. It is also nice that the lid of the box has a sata connection on one side and the usb on the the other. Handy for quick connects and disconnects when doing HHD and Computer work.
The only down sides I have encountered are, it does almost nothing for protection from drops and fall, which well all know is murder for a HDD.
The other notable problem is occasionally a HDD will have a tiny bit of extra room in the enclosure. This can cause noise, vibration, or even pin connection problems. I find this can be remedied by taping small shims of paper to ensure a tight fit.
Overall I could not be more pleased with this product.
852590
great portable drive enclosure. Has helped me out numerous times.
1630590
This enclosure works exactly as it should. I get wonderful USB 3 speeds when transferring files.

It looks really nice too!

It came with a power plug, but I don't need it with my 1TB drive, when I plug it into my laptop. (I do use the power plug whenever I plug the drive into the USB 3 hub on my desk - where there is other power hungry devices plugged in also.)

The cable length is just right too, at about 18 inches. However, it is a lightweight, thin cable. That is good and bad. It seems to come out / fall out easily from the enclosure. I tested a different cable and it stays in.

The enclosure feels very sturdy. Yet, I keep the cable with the drive enclosure in a small padded case.
2782446
About 18 months ago I bought 5 of the 3TB models to use in a Synology DS1515+. This volume was configured as SHR2 (similar to RAID 6 as it has a 2 disk parity). This has basically been running 24/7 since (approx. 11,500 hours uptime) and serves as data storage and backup for about 6 PC's (it's about 60% filled) and it's performed great over that time. They hardly ever cross 40C and that's with my Synology's fan set to quiet

However there's been a steady increase of bad sectors in two drives over the past couple months in addition to frequent disconnects. They were occurring more frequently over the last couple days (they both crossed 1000 bad sectors just yesterday). Luckily I bought two 4TB Red drives recently to upgrade the NAS so I swapped them in and the Volume was able to rebuild successfully.

It's disappointing that 2 out of the 5 drives I initially bought began giving trouble so soon (I plugged one of them into a HDD dock and I actually began hearing grinding noises so it's safe to assume that one's properly failing) but of course that's just luck sometimes and I won't hesitate to purchase more of these Red drives. I'd like to set up some IP cameras for surveillance soon so I hope the 6TB drops in price in a couple of months.
1810524
A good value for the money, but we've had constant drive failures. Currently replacing our fifth drive since purchasing this enclosure