Testing

In our testing we used two programs: HD Tune and SiSoftware's Sandra. We will be testing both the capabilities of both the USB and the eSATA connections on a 320GB Western Digital Caviar 16MB Cache Hard Drive. Here are the results of the USB test.

The USB results were fairly in line with most of the other enclosures we have tested here at ThinkComputers, averaging at 27.5MB/s. Here are the eSATA results.

Of course the eSATA speeds were greater than our USB results, but they did seem rather typical for external hard drive enclosures including the eSATA feature.

Conclusion

The Vantec NexStar Hard Drive Dock is probably not the first thing that people would think of to use for external hard drives, but it does prove effective for people swapping external hard drives often. The nice thing about this hard drive dock is that it does support both 2.5" and 3.5" hard drives which most enclosures do not support.

The only downside I have about this is the lack of support on the hard drive while it is inside of the dock, but overall it is a great choice if you're swapping hard drives often or need to quickly access something. For about $39.99 online you can have this hard drive dock that supports multiple options. Overall ThinkComputers awards the Vantec NexStar Hard Drive Dock a 9 out of 10 score.

Pros:

- Supports 2.5" and 3.5" SATA hard drives
- Both eSATA and USB connectivity
- Fast and easy to swap hard drives
- Easy to use

Cons:

- Hard drive is not supported well inside of dock