Vantec Nexstar 2 NST-525UF External 5.25" Enclosure 3/3
Bluetooth 20 Feb 2004

Conclusion

The back of the enclosure with 1 USB, 2 1394, 1 audio port,
power connector, power switch and the cooling fan.

You can place the unit vertically or horizontally (as shown in the diagrams below)

Once everything is installed, it is time to power it up. Attach either the USB or Firewire cable supplied and Windows XP detects it without the need of extra drivers. If you are using Win 98, the drivers can be found in the provided CD-ROM.

In our tests, we tried the two modes of transfer for a DVD-Video disc and burning of a DVD-RW (4x) using USB or Firewire.

We recorded the timings and found that Firewire is slightly faster than USB in the data transfer from disc to HDD while transferring of data to be burnt into DVD-RW did not register must of a difference. This is probably because writing to a disc takes needs buffering.

Here are some timings recorded.

Burning a DVD-Video Disc (data from HDD)

USB took 14m 39s
Firewire took 14m 39s

Transferring files from DVD-Video disc to HDD

USB took 9m 43.9s
Firewire took 9m 33.6s

Conclusion

Vantec Nexstar 2 NST-525UF External 5.25" Enclosure is definitely something that I have longed for. In fact, I wanted to review the 3.5" HDD enclosure but I made a mistake and requested the 5.25" instead. Well, this enclosure is definitely here to stay as I find it very useful. Being able to convert my DVD writer a portable device opens up the options of using the DVD writer in PC or MAC environment. Being portable, I can bring it to any PC or Notebook that does not have a built in DVD drive.

If the kit comes with a bracket for 3.5" HDD, that would make this enclosure even better since it will work with all IDE devices. As it uses IDE interface, it might be a good consideration to include SATA interface as well for future expansion. Nexstar could consider bundling a universal power plug as it might be used in different countries that uses 2 or 3 pin plugs.

With its remarkable capability, i would highly recommend this product.

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