Vantec 4 Bays 3.5-Inch SATA to USB 3.0 & eSATA External Hard Drive Enclosure with Fan (NST-640SU3-BK)

I purchased this after returning other 8bay enclosures and another 5 bay. This Vantec units suits my needs. I do not use any RAID configurations. I simply use JBoD (Just Bunch of Drives). Now assuming you have port multiplier motherboard OR a PCIE card (which I have) that has port multiplier, then simply hook up and poooof! Extra massive storage. I have fan at max setting and pretty darn quiet. I have not done any stress tests to see actual performance as far as cooling/ venting drives from higher temperatures, but drives fairly cool to the touch by comparison to other enclosures I recently returned.

PROS: -With my current setup and PCIE card, I am getting on average 75-90 MBs transfer rates. Currently using eSATA only. My system is older and does not support USB 3.0.
- Its quiet
- Plug and Play
- Great Price!
I recommend for similar intended setup.

CONS: – Short plug in cord length. I want more slack to put in desired location since you do not want to bump/ drop/ ruin/ kill your drives! (has happened to me before.)
- It has a cheap plastic feel! Hard drive pullout handles and tabs cheaper plastic.
- I did not receive all screws to utilize the hard drive handles. 4 drives… 2 sides= 8 screws. Why were only 4 packaged? VERY MINOR inconvenience but a con on purchase nonetheless. Who has spare hard drive screws laying around??

Again, I will be buying this unit again for my next batch of HD. So I do recommend.

I’ve read about the USB 3.0 issues others had with this enclosure, so to connect it to my 2012 Mac Mini, I ordered USB 3.0 to Esata Adapter Support Port Multiplier (Patent Pending) – U3esata which includes a port multiplier. So far, after a few days of use, everything is working as expected though I have not tested the USB 3.0 connection yet. With this set up, no special driver software was needed on the Mac.
I have two 3TB and two 2TB drives installed. Installing a drive is as simple as attaching the tray with two screws and sliding the drive into the enclosure. Unlike another reviewer, there were enough screws included. Each drive also has multiple partitions and the mac recognizes and mounts each partition separately. Moving the 2TB drives from other external USB enclosures went smoothly. The 3TB drives from seagate and western digital enclosures however needed to be repartitioned when placed in the Vantec. Once repartitioned, they worked fine. I’ve since added a 4TB drive and it is also working ok.
In terms of performance, copying a file from the mac’s internal drive to the vantec reaches 85 to 90 MB/second. Copying a file from one drive in the Vantec to another drive within the enclosure runs at about 60 to 65 MB/second. In terms of power usage, when the enclosure is on but the computer it is connected to is off, the enclosure consumes 4 watts according to the killawatt meter. When the hard drives spin up during when the computer starts, power peaks at around 48 watts. Once it settles down, power usage levels off at 25 watts at idle and 30 watts when reading/writing to a drive. Again, this is with four hard drives installed.
There is also a dial which controls the fan speed. At low settings, it is pretty quiet. There’s just a low hum. At the fastest speed, the noise is noticeable, but I haven’t had to turn it up, even with four drives inserted. The drives do spin down when not in use.
So far, I’m very happy with this enclosure.

Update 1/7/2013: I’ve gotten another one of these enclosures and set up a RAID of 3 drives through ‘disk utility’ in Mac OS X. So far its working as expected. I’ve also been connecting to this enclosure over my Mac Mini’s USB 3.0 port without the USB3 to eSATA adapter and have it has been working flawlessly. I have not yet seen any of the USB 3.0 issues that others have reported. Reads from the RAID array top out at about 190MB/second.

I needed to get some more air space in my server by removing 4 of the 9 drives so it would run cooler. I first bought a Mediasonic HF2-SU3S2 ProBox 4, but it kept disconnecting from the USB 3.0 card. I even upgraded the card to the newest card and latest drivers. I still was getting the same disconnects — anywhere from every 5 to 15 minutes. I cannot restore from or backup to a device that does that. So I bought this Vantec after reading the reviews. I had it up and running in about 10 minutes with 4 2TB drives installed and it has not disconnected once in about 6 hours of active backup.

A note to the person who says the unit is not shipped with screws. The screws are attached to the back of a cardboard insert in a small plastic bag. Easy to not see these. My guess is that they were put there to keep them from getting lost in the bottom of the box. Ironic really.

At $99.99 I have no problem with the build quality of the Vantec. It is mostly plastic, but seems to be rigid. It is about the quietest device I have with a fan. It is easy to get the drives in and out and is well ventilated.

I’ve been building systems for 30 years and I am happy with this enclosure.

Update: 29-Jan-2013 ************************************************************

I’ve been running the 4 drives daily to backup the network. These drives not only get data from the network but run backups of the backups. So, one drives copies data from itself to another drive in the same enclosure and also to another external USB 3.0 enclosure. All is working perfectly. I have not had one single problem since installing.

This is one of those items that I always feel like I’m taking a risk when I order it. Will the eSATA adapter I ordered separately be compatible? Will the cable not reach? Will the drives I have somehow not be compatible because of some feature I didn’t know to check for?

Well, it arrived well packed and protected, the instructions were straightforward (even if a bit small for my eyes), and the device activated all four 1TB drives and showed a blue LED as each one spun up.

I installed it on a server running Windows Server 2012 Essentials and initially all of the drives spun up then only the top drive remained active. I put in the driver CD and used the “Update Driver” function and it found what it needed on the CD and all the drives lit up and stayed on. Easy enough.

Initially, I could see all the files from my last RAID array which was very surprising. I didn’t trust that, though, so I formatted the entire collection of drives as a new Storage Space with parity, and it has been good to go ever since.

Easy to install hard drives. Seamless plug and play. I was up and running with this enclosure in about fifteen minutes (including the time to install the drives). This is the fourth 4-bay enclosure I’ve tried. I sent two back and have two (now) running. Only time will tell, but this one is probably the best of the two. It definitely has a better cooling design. I’ll probably buy another one when I run out of space again.

Ordered this item yesterday and received it today…yes, that fast. Installed four hard drives; 500GB, 640GB and 2TB 3.5″ respectively and 500GB 2.5 (laptop) hard drive. (Note that the bays are not designed for 2.5″ drives…but when there’s a will, there’s a way!) The 2TB hard drive was not recognized, not even when disconnecting all the other hard drives. Not sure why, but I suspect a higher voltage requirement. I had previously tried connecting this same hard drive through a SATA/IDE to USB 2.0 adapter and it behaved in exactly the same manner…so I can’t blame Vantec 4 Bay Enclosure for this issue.

I was home alone today and had plenty of time to play with all four drives; three installed within the enclosure and an external USB 3.0. Transferred tons of data from one drive to another, partitioned and formatted most, play movies, music and clips, did some data backup and much more. Didn’t encountered any issues…except for the one described above.

Didn’t use the included pads…really didn’t know of their purpose until I read some reviews here. At first I inserted the drives without attaching the pull-out handles with screws. The drives worked fine, but it’s an inconvenience if you have to take one out, which happened in my case.

Anyway, since one drive had to be removed, I decided to remove all four. This time I used the screws and installed and tried one hard drive at time, instead of all four at the same time. This, in my opinion, makes the job much simpler, especially if the drives are partitioned into two or more partitions. As I installed each drive, I renamed each one according to their respective bay.

For example, I installed the first drive in bay number one and once it was recognized I partitioned it as three separate partitions and renamed each partition as Bay1Music(E), Bay1Videos(F) and Bay1Karaoke (G) respectively. The second partition was named Bay2Movies(H), Bay2WorkRalated(I), Bay3Woodwork(J)…for my woodworking plans and related data. The third was named Bay4Everyting(K) because it contains many of the data that stored on the other two hard drives plus data from drive C.

My only complaint about this item is the cooling fan. It’s not loud per-say, but it rattles, especially at low speed…perhaps an indication of low quality. Overall enclosure construction has the appearance of “OK” quality. It’s not bad, but it’s plastic, which doesn’t lend for a solid construction. The power supply is just a regular laptop power supply. These types of supplies are bulky and one has to deal with two cables; one coming in to the supply and the other coming out…now I have five of these things behind my desk.

My one suggestion with these or any similar enclosure is the use of a power strip with individual switches like the Mr. Dj PSC108 8 Channel Power Strip with Lighted Toggles or surge suppressor like the Tripp Lite TMC-6 Surge Protector Under Monitor 6 Outlet RJ11 6ft Cord 1440 Joule. Electronic equipment can use a lot of electricity if not managed correctly…and electricity is not cheap. A power strip allows you to turn the power off to a piece of equipment, like an external drive enclosure, when not in use while continuing using other equipment.

I had three HDDs that I’ve been using on USB 2.0/eSATA docking stations for years. Decided to buy a fourth drive and did not want to continue docking/undocking drives. This enclosure had decent reviews and it had USB 3.0/eSATA with active cooling. I formatted the fourth drive independently and installed all four of them per-formatted. The instructions are ok, they will not tell you what to do with the four foam squares. They are supposed to be stuck on each of the HDDS mounting plate to ensure a snug fit. Like others have already noted the mounting screws are easy to miss, if you are not looking for them.

Once installed, the enclosure has two connection options: USB which works great in legacy 2.0 and native 3.0 modes, and eSATA which would work great if you can find a good eSATA card with port multiplier capability. USB 2.0/3.0 have this feature from the start, so by plugging in one cable you will still see and use four independent drives. A good USB 3.0 card (if you don’t have a port already) will go a long way. For most copy, back up or media file playing applications USB 3.0 will be as capable as eSATA.

Finally, the cooling fan is very quiet even at the lowest speed, you can adjust the speed if you want to. Once you have installed four regular 3.5 in HDDs the enclosure will become quite heavy to carry around so plan your final placement in advance.

So it works great for four drives, Donna what I will do when I need a fifth? Perhaps buy another enclosure and fill it up with four more drives.

Amazing product in general. Great design, great size. I was expecting a cooler more powerful, even setting up the cooler to high speed, but it’s fine any way.