Vantec Nexstar GX USB 3.0 Dual 2.5" SATA SSD/HDD RAID Enclosure, Black (NST-272S3-BK)

This is a solid built compact raid enclosure . It was easy to assemble . I bought this to make an external drive for my Xbox series X using two 1 TB SSD's. It did take a bit to get it to work but since then it has been issue free. In order to make it work you need to configure it on a PC before attaching to the console. First and most important only plug into the motherboard not a case USB or USB hub( this was 90% of my issues it would recognize the drive and then randomly disconnect ,as soon as I tried using mobo USB no issues) second ...most drives are not formatted out of the box .If you do not have the ability to initialize before installing into the case ,install one and initialize and remove it and do the second ,then remove from USB and install both drives and reconnect and it should work from there . It took a bit to figure it out but was worth it two 1tb SSD's striping are a must for the Xbox series x .I transferred a 133 gb game in about 6 minutes where it would take 20+ on a conventional and about 5 mins between the internal and additional storage on the console...it's a must have if you as me.Now if you don't use the console for a week or so it will turn off the drive and you will need to plug and unplug it to turn back on,and as far as being used on the console the power cord is optional as the USB will power it.

Amazon did not email me asking me to leave a review on this product in return for discounts, which is the only reason I have ever left reviews previously. I came here on my own accord to praise this absolute miracle of a disk enclosure. This review will be pretty lengthy in order to tell the whole story of my adventure with this product, so bear with me. I recently purchased the dual drive RAID enclosure (type A, I believe.) First, some preamble. A couple years ago I decided to put a hybrid drive in my ps4 pro. It worked very well, and I also used an enclosure to use the original 1tb toshiba hdd that came in the console as external storage. Well recently, I decided it was time to update and purchased a 1tb ssd for an internal drive. Which left me with a conundrum (or so I thought.) Ps4 only let's you connect one external storage device to the console at a time, so what to do with the other drive? Then by some stroke of luck, I came across this device. I could combine two drives and have it recognized as one? On a playstation? I didnt believe it, but worst case scenario I could sell it to a more technologically inclined friend or hold onto it until I found some other use for it. Lo and behold with a few hours on google (the lengthy amount of time it took was entirely my own fault, as I'll explain in a moment) I managed to get a 1tb seagate firecuda and a 1tb toshiba hdd recognized as one drive (as well as formatted correctly for ps4 external storage.) In addition to working perfectly, this thing gets better read and write speeds through the ps4s usb 3.0 port than the firecuda did on the internal sata III connection and that's without utilizing the firecuda drives 8gb flash cache, which is what makes the firecuda sshd a faster drive than a lot of other 2.5 inch 5400 rpm hdds. The flash memory cache in an sshd resets once power stops going to the drive, and data is only added to the cache after that data has been accessed several times (I think I've read 5 times?) on the same power cycle. So once power stops being supplied to the sshd, it performs the same as any other 5400 rpm hdd until you can open something enough times to get data back into the flash memory. But enough about the firecuda, this enclosure is absolutely spectacular. So as I stated previously, it took me a long time to set this drive up, but this was ENTIRELY due to user error on my part. There are switches on the enclosure that let you choose between JBoD, RAID0, and RAID1, as well as a reset button. I wrongly assumed that disconnecting, flipping the switches to the desired configuration, and reconnecting the drive to my laptop while setting it up would make my computer recognize the drive in my chosen configuration. It took me a long time to figure this part out, but listen to me when I tell you; YOU CAN ONLY RECONFIGURE THE DRIVE BY PRESSING THE RESET BUTTON. NOT DISCONNECTING THE DRIVE. NOT EVEN REMOVING THE HARD DISKS/SSD DRIVES THEMSELVES FROM THE UNIT. YOU NEED TO USE THE RESET BUTTON PROVIDED TO YOU ON THE ENCLOSURE. That's right. I spent almost 2 hours on google just to find out that all I had to do was press a stinking button. Boy was I mad at myself once I finally tried pressing the button and noticed that my computer recognized it as a RAID0 drive pretty much instantly. In summation; Vantec Nexstar GX Enclosure: 10/10, runs faster on 5gbps usb 3.0 than either HDD inside of it does on 6gbps SATA III My own technological prowess(in this instance, at least): 0/10, I ignored the instructions and paid the price, taking almost 2 hours of google searching to realize that I just needed to press a button (which the instructions clearly state needs to be pressed *facepalm*)

I bought this and 2 new Kingston drives to use as a RAID 1 music streamer. I could not get it to stay working long enough to use it even once. Would lock up randomly even during formatting. No errors it would just freeze. I used the included power adapter. I tried using just one drive. I also tried using a WD drive I already had and same problem every time. I tried it with both Windows 10 and MacOSX. The one time I got it to where I could copy files to it after just a couple of minutes it just froze and was no longer seen by the OS. Had to unplug it and plug back in but ended up with a corrupted file it froze on. All 3 drives work perfectly when mounted in a single bay USB enclosure I also have. I was drawn to this model as it is one of the few that can be powered separately instead of stealing power from pc or laptop. Build quality is ok for the price but would be nice if it worked. Guess I got a defective one. Returning for refund and will try a different brand. Update: Checked it one last time before returning. If I format an SSD in my single bay enclosure and put files on it then place the SSD in this unit you can access it just fine to read it. If you try to write something to it large files freeze every time. Small files seem to write to it ok. If you try to formal the drive in this unit it always freeezes part way through and all the data that was on it is still there. So it seems to read ok but has problems writing to drives.

It was well built, it now has screws to hold each drives in their place and material of the case is better than I had expected. I'm actually getting twice the throughput on my HDD as I would expect on raid 0. Great product, highly recommend at around $30. Update: 3/6/2020 It started to become very unstable and kept freezing in between writing large files or many files. I am not sure why it started doing that it was the same amount of data that was put on the drive in the first place. So, I returned it and will be receiving a replacement tomorrow, I'll update and see if this survives 2 weeks. Update 3/7/2020 I found out that it was not the enclosure, but it was the Micro USB 3.0 cable. When I swapped the cable, it fixed the enclosure right away. So, I'm going back to 5 stars, given that there was nothing wrong with the enclosure. Update Feb 2/2022: It works great for spin drives, for SSD's not so much. It maxes out at 345MB/s which is way too slow and it was faster on my single SSD's than Raid0 on this case at 400MB/s. For SSD's I do not recommend and sent the second unit back.

What a premium enclosure. This enclosure is rock solid. I had my drive installed in seconds and I was able to run the drive just by plugging it into my USB without having to use the separate power cable. The device has two LED lights that show disk activity. On the back side it has air holes to disburse heat. it also has a clip on stand which is certainly a nice add-on. Anyone looking for an enclosure for 2.5 SATA drives will be VERY happy if they order one of these.

First, how to configure: 1. insert your drives and select raid mode using dip switches 2. plug in the drive, but ONLY the power. Do not connect to your PC yet 3. press and hold the reset button to configure the controller into the mode you selected. You have to press and hold for some time. If it doesn't work, unplug and try again. 4. Connect to PC and format drives 5. Install drivers & restart Initially, I got a paltry 40mbps over usb3.0. Sad! I was JUST about to return it when I thought about drivers. Checking device manager didn't yield anything, but when I went to windows update I found an optional USB driver update. My speeds increased by almost 10X after the driver! I'm happy with it now. It's almost 4x faster than a cheap USB3.0 to SATA adapter that I have!

2.5” Hard disks work flawlessly in Raid 0. The enclosure has two switches on the back to configure hardware raid. I flipped it to raid 0, plugged it in and both drives immediately powered up and showed up as a 2tb drive using disk utility on Mac OS Sonoma. Formatted GUID partition map with Mac OS Extended volume. I have two 1TB 5400rpm drives in this enclosure, they are both the same brand and are identical. Side note, for those who may not know: If you choose to run it in Raid 0 then I HIGHLY suggest taking full backups of it regularly especially if you house important data on it, not because anything to do with the raid bay itself but instead you will lose all your data if even only one drive fails. That is with any raid 0 setup. It is possible to recover some data but it will take some work.

I bought one of these enclosures a year or so back and use it as a backup drive that lives in the fire safe. It has worked 100% and I love it! Fast forward to today and I order 2 more of these awesome enclosures. The reason for my low score this time is due to the cable provided. The end that connects to the enclosure is 2.5mm shorter than the first cable I have. This leads to the cable not making proper contact or just falling out. Vantec, if you are reading this, you need to re-source your cables. The one provided is NOT to spec.

Jobs or Raid 1 or Raid 0, they all work perfectly! Easy to install, I put 2 500gb drives and am currently using them as Raid0, very fast drive...

I bought this to mount 2 X SSDs for a NAS based on the Raspberry Pi 4. Very handy for keeping the drives in one enclosure. The pre-drilled screw holes make it easy to mount in a standard 3.5" drive rack, or mount to other types of frames.

ESTE PRODUCT ES SIMPELMENTE ESPACTCULA CON UN RENDIMIENTO SUPER BUENO

I connected 2 ssd drives, different sizes and they went in easily. Connected them to my smart TV, worked first-time! I'd worried about if they needed a power supply. It came with a US style 2 prong mains plug. Useless in the UK, I'd need an adaptor. But the tv's USB socket is powered so no need for an external power supply after all. Great! Super! This cheap setup replaces a non-functioning £200 media box connected to my TV. Very happy customer. Don't use the RAID facility.

Works great but you can't just throw two drives in this and expect it to do the rest. Both drives must be formatted BEFORE installing in the enclosure and both drives must match if you wish to use RAID 0. I actually formatted one and forgot to format the other and the formatted one showed up while the other didn't. Solid performance in RAID 0 with two 256GB SSDs. Getting approx 400mb/s read and write. The enclosure is decent aesthetically. I believe it's aluminum and is about the size of a 3.5" HDD. Hopefully it holds up over the long term.