Product Description

Vantec introduces its NexStar CX 2.5-inch External Hard Drive Enclosure.  Ideal for anyone in need of portable storage, the NexStar's slim pocket design makes it a convenient way to carry your data.  The NexStar CX turns any SATA 2.5-inch Hard Drive into a convenient hard drive that can be used on any system with a USB port.  In addition, the aluminum casing protects the drive from overheating and vibration.  The NexStar CX supports USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 to offer fast transfer speeds of up to 480MBPS.  The Vantec NexStar CX 2.5-inch External Hard Drive Enclosure is great for anyone who requires a high performance, lightweight, and durable portable storage solution.

Product Details

• Brand: Vantec
• Model: NST-200S2-BK
• Dimensions: .0" h x .0" w x .0" l, .40 pounds

Features

• Aluminum Casing Cools Down Your Hard Drive
• Easily Add Storage to Any System with USB
• Hot-Swappable:  Plug and Play Without Rebooting
• Compatible with PC or Mac
• Support 2.5-inch SATA I/II Hard Drive up to 320GB

Customer Reviews

Great little enclosure
Vantec isn't the most well-known company, but they make some very good hard drive enclosures and this is no exception.

The enclosure itself is one solid piece of aluminum with two end plastic pieces (one of which is attached to the hardware and plugs into your hard drive). The aluminum does a great job of dissipating heat and rarely feels hot to the touch, even during heavy use. There's no on/off button on the drive and there is one single blue LED that flickers to indicate drive activity. There's a jack for an A/C adapter, but it doesn't come with one. Instead, they package a Y-splitter USB cable so you can draw additional power from a second USB port if needed. On the opposite end of the drive is a thin mirror detail that adds a bit of pointless (but not unappreciated) shiny. The packaging was also very nice and compact.

Installing/removing a hard drive is a snap. All of the circuitry is attached to one of the plastic end pieces and that snaps right into the hard drive (just match up the pins and go). Then just slide that right into the enclosure and close it up with the two included tiny screws. There is nothing else securing the hard drive to the enclosure, so it does jiggle around inside (you can tape a few pieces of paper to the metal side of the hard drive to fix the jiggle).

A complaint I've heard in other reviews about this drive is that the places where the screws go are not properly threaded and the screws are easy to strip. I had no problems putting the screws in. I screwed both in at the same time, tightening one a bit, then switching to the other, switching back to the first, and so forth. Also: do NOT over-tighten the screws! They do indeed seem easy to strip.

I'm using mine with my Mac as a backup drive and a Time Machine drive. The OS first claimed the drive was unreadable, but it just needed to be formatted correctly (HFS+ for Macs). Also, it runs fine off of one USB port on my MacBook Pro (and I'd assume for all recent Macs). And of course it works on Windows (though my PCs don't know what to do with my Mac-formatted hard drive).

Anyway, if you've got an SATA laptop drive in need of a case, this is a great choice. It's cheaper and smaller than the other Vantec SATA drives, and it works like a charm. The only thing that makes me mark it down from a 5-star rating is the slight jiggle of the hard drive... kinda annoying to craft your own fix for it.

1 minute and you're done!
Bought this thinking it would be a bit of a task to put the my old drive in it, I was wrong. It's basically 3 parts, the body, the cover/board and 2 screws. You plug in the cover/board to the drive, slide the drive into the enclosure and place the two screws (#0) and you're done! I reformatted the drive as it had an OS on it since I replaced my macbook drive with a 500gb drive. for $14.99 I have a portable 250gb drive, AWESOME!

The enclosure uses uses mini USB, the cable supplied has mini-USB on one end and two USB 2.0 connections on the other, this is cool if you have an older mac or a PC that has a USB port that does not supply enough power to run the drive. The new Mac's only need one to make this one spin but it's good they provided it to ensure no problems with other machines.

NOTE:
One thing to note if you have never erased a drive with an OS on it. I had to figure this out. Disk Utility would not just let me reformat the drive because many of the files where protected. So I dragged the folders and files into the trash then Option+Delete to delete all the files. Once they were gone it reformatted just fine. Hope that helps.

Compact, great price, what's not to like!
I recently had to purchase another cover for an external drive and found none better than this one, which I had previously purchased a year ago as well. They are lightweight, well made, well priced, and easy to assemble.