Vantec NexStar 3 SuperSpeed USB 3.0 3.5" Drive Enclosure Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2010-05-08
·
1,073 words · ~5 min read
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okay so today we're going to be having a look at something that we haven't seen
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before this is the nexar 3 super speed
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external 3 and 1 halfin hard drive enclosure it doesn't include a hard
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drive but it is USB 3.0 ready so that's
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super speed USB so it goes USB then high speed then super speed okay okay so the
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maximum transfer rate is up to 5 gbit per second let me start out by saying
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that is completely unnecessary there's no single hard drive these days that
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it's going to take advant of that transfer rate but that's not to say that
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USB 3.0 transfer rates are U totally
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unnecessary because what you could have potentially is a hard drive enclosure
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that contains you know four USB or sorry four USB four hard drives and you can
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read and write to all of them at the same time say for example in like a raid
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zero or something like that so then you'd really need that extra speed okay
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so basically USB 3.0 is about let me
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think so it's about three times faster than e sat which is in turn
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about three times faster than USB 1.1 I
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believe let me just think so 480 megabit per second is USB 2 did I say 1.1 wow
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I'm getting very confused here why don't I just read off the box to make life
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simpler for myself okay so it's backwards compatible with USB 2.0 or 1.1
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it's hot swappable so you can plug in play without rebooting which would be
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pretty typical of a USB anything device
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okay so maximum transfer rates ah here we go so they give us the sus spec so
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the maximum transfer rates are up to 480 megabit per second which means that
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almost any hard drive these days is going to be bottlenecked by USB 2.0
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however USB 3.0 at 5 gbits per second is
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going to be more than enough for any modern hard drive so it means that you
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are getting the full transfer speed out of your hard drive regardless of how
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fast it is so it includes a USB 3.0 cable all right so you can see that the
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they've got like a standard you recognize this one connector and then
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this one is a USB 3 this is a new USB 3.0 standard so that's going to go into
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the back of the external drive then you have some oh he's going to look at that
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somewhere he couldn't see it well enough before oh there you go okay yeah that's
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good all right and then we've got some mounting screws okay so these two black
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ones go at the back of the unit to install the uh the hard drive cage and
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then these four for attaching the hard drive to the sled okay instruction
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manual I just told you everything you pretty much need to know about how to uh
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how to use it here's a little stand so if you want the uh if you want the
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enclosure to sit on your desk like this then this is the little stand for it to
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sit in okay so that's pretty straightforward as well and then next
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this is going to be the power adapter which looks exactly like it did for the
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old nexar 2 or nextar maybe it is a nextar 3 but the old USB 2.0 eada one I
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have one of these it's a great little enclosure actually I've had it for years
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and it still looks it even still looks all shiny they've managed to do a shiny
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finish that does doesn't attract fingerprints too badly so it looks like
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the new one the Super Speed nexar 3 they've obviously dropped the eata
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interface because eata at 150 megabit
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per second is not nearly as fast as USB
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3.0 at five ah sorry what is it 100 blah blah
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blah no no no what it does SATA run at
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so the new SATA is 3 gbit per second the old one is 1.5
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five oh no the new one is six okay okay okay yeah yeah yeah yeah so ESAT is 1.5
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gbit per second and this runs at 5 so EAD is completely redundant on something
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like this it's all about speed all right so you've got a power plug here then
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you've got a power switch you can see that the unit will just come apart just
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like that okay so this is the sled I was talking about so you plug the hard drive
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in this way it seems to have mounting holes for you to mount it on the bottom
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so you plug in your four or you screw in your four screws there
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all right so let me see this little header right here this guy right there
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you just plug in this one it goes in
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either way it actually totally doesn't matter you just install it one of the
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two ways that it fits on there and then that's going to power the front
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indicator LED so this little vanc logo here will light up blue okay so let's
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have a look at sort of the unit itself overall so this just slides in on these
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little guides right here you can see how that fits in just like that so we'll
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just tuck that in there just like it was before before oops uhoh sort of like it
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was before there we go okay so you got kind of like a black shiny somewhat
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brushed looking finish can you see that okay in the camera okay good and then
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the top is kind of rounded and then the other side You' got the same thing kind
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of a nice shiny uh nice shiny brushed finish on the metal there and the bottom
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looks like that all right front it's got Chrome accents and whatnot so I think
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that pretty much concludes it thank you for checking out my unboxing and first
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look here at the nextar 3 super speed
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black USB 3 hard drive