Vantec NexStar TX 2.5" USB 3.0 Hard Drive Enclosure (NST-228S3-BK) Black

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.

A solid high quality 2.5 inch enclosure from Vantec. It comes well packaged and requires the use of a screwdriver to install the drive and secure it into place. The screwdriver and screws are provided. One of the screws provided in my package had no thread on it, but the others provide enough grip to keep the drive secure. In all it took me about 5 minutes to install the drive. One thing to note is that the provided self-adhesive rubber feet are used to cover the screws holding the outer case together, hiding the screws completely. This is fine until you need to remove the drive from the enclosure again (e.g. to swap in another drive). At that point the rubber feet may no longer have enough adhesive for a second use. This and the screw-based assembly process mean that this enclosure is best suited to applications that will not require hot-swapping of the installed drive.Read/write speeds are good. Using a Samsung 850 Pro SSD in the enclosure, connected to my PC via USB 3.1 Gen 2 port, I am getting nearly the same sequential read speeds as an identical internal drive accessed via the PC's internal bus. Sequential write speeds are maybe just 10% less than the internal SSD drive. Random read/write speeds were reported as only around half the PC's internal SSD speed though. Connecting to a PC using a USB 3.1 Gen 2 port was found to be 20% quicker than a USB 3.1 Gen 1 port, as might be expected with that connectors increased bandwidth.All-in-all I'm happy with this enclosure. It might seem harsh but I'm inclined to knock a star off for the inconvenience of losing the rubber feet if you try to swap the installed drive out. That said I can recommend this a good quality, well built enclosure.

The unit housed a Solid State Drive to enable playback of music. It was attached to a NVIDIA Shield. Without knowing the cause I then suffered problems with WIFI throughout the house. The keyboard attached to the Shield only worked when I stood next to the unit. I thought the battery had gone so replaced it with a bluetooth keyboard. That only worked when on maximum charge. WIFI to my laptop became patchy when the computer was moved to the other end of the house from the router. After reading a document about radiation leakage from SSD's I disconnected the drive and all problems were resolved. I have since bought a double shielded USB cable to replace the supplied cable and everything is working fine. Does anyone want to buy a surplus USB cable and bluetooth keyboard. :-)

Perfect. Took hard drive from my old laptop (which was bricked), stuck it this which is easy and took 5 mins. Data was transferred to new laptop and I now have a spare external drive. Brilliant and simple product.

This device works as it should and it's good value for money when compared tp similar products. However, bad design faults always annoy me because somebody didn't think about how this was gonna be used. For some reason, they put the drive activity lights on the back of the unit and conseqently, they cannot be viewed unless you pick up the item and turn it around. It's why it only got 4 stars from me.