Vantec has been a major player in the cooling market since 1994. In the past few years they have been expanding their scope on the PC market and one of the new additions has been the recent flux of hard drive enclosures. They are bringing the elegance they introduced in the cooling market, to all of there newer products.

Vantec is taking a broad step forward with the NexStar 3 2.5" hard drive enclosure. SATA 2.5” hard drives are fairly new to the market; they started showing up around two years ago, but in more recent times, notebook manufactures are using these drives in large quantities. This has lead to the drives being more readily available as well as lowering prices for them..

Package and Contents

The shipping gods were happy with me. The box came to me with no damage. When I opened the box there were tons of packing popcorn and a second smaller box. I was sent what appears to be the retail packaging shrink wrapped and everything! Like a kid on Christmas morning, I tore through the packaging to get at the goods.

After opening the retail box, you will notice that everything is packaged in layers. The first layer has the enclosure,inside of an anti-static bag, and is surrounded by cardboard preventing the case from moving around in the box. Once you remove the cardboard you get to see the cables and enclosure that is provided. For your viewing pleasure, I have included the manufactures specs and the content listing of what’s inside the box.

Instruction Booklet:

I must say, this was a rare sight! Included in the box was a 16 page instruction booklet. It had instructions on how to install the drive with clear instructions and pictures. They had sections on how to unplug the drive from the computer (Mac/PC), how to format the drive (Mac/PC) and a troubleshooting section. I guess what made this rare was the fact that the instructions were clearly laid out, simple to understand, and at the same time very detailed.

Hard Drive Carrying Case:

Included in the box was a black nylon case that could hold both the enclosure and USB cable. The hard drive carrying case is very stylish, but the pouch where you put the enclosure was a little on the small side. If you are like me and have fat fingers, it can be very frustrating trying to dig it out. Most of the time I ended up putting the hard drive enclosure in the middle of the carrying case and just zippered it closed. I was not expecting to get a case with the enclosure; a nice touch for a portable device.