Quick Review: Vantech NexStar Hard Drive Dock

I started a new job as a Linux Systems Administrator this week. My backup disk I use for my laptop died on the first day. While I’m not exactly being terribly useful here yet, it’s still been a tense few days while I waited for my new backup solution to arrive. Especially when I realised that my backups have actually been becoming slowly more corrupted for the last two weeks – yay for failing IDE controller.

The old disk and enclosure were PATA. Looking at the prices of SATA disks now, it seemed it was a pretty good time to switch to using SATA for externals as well. I’ve paired the Vantec NexStar Hard Drive Dock with a Western Digital Caviar Green 500GB.

The NexStar dock takes a less traditional approach to hard disk enclosures, providing a toaster-like slot that allows installation and removal of drives without a single screw. It supports both 3.5″ ‘desktop’ sized drives, as well as 2.5″ laptop drives. There’s a quick-release button to the right that releases the drive from the dock, and a large, easy to press power button on the front that glows with the ever-present accursed blue LEDs. At least it’s relatively easy to ignore in a brightly lit office.

The dock supports both USB2 and eSATA, including a bracket to convert an internal SATA port to an eSATA port on a desktop machine. It’s fairly lightweight but feels sturdy, and becomes heavy enough to not be at risk of being knocked over once you put a hard disk into it.

For the price I’m very impressed with this device. A dual slot version is also available, allowing you to use up to two disks in the enclosure at once. There’s also a slightly more expensive option that includes Firewire. For the sysadmin or technician who tends to swap drives around between devices fairly often, or use enclosures to recover data from failing systems, this device is a life saver.