Vantec NexStar MX Dual 2.5-inch Hard Drive Enclosure Review

Installation
Installation of your drives should be pretty straight forward. We will be installing two 2.5-inch solid state drives in the unit.

Vantec NexStar MX Dual 2.5-inch Hard Drive Enclosure

Just simply slide them in and lock them into the SATA connection at the end of the unit. Then use the supplied screws to secure them in place.

Vantec NexStar MX Dual 2.5-inch Hard Drive Enclosure

Before you close the unit it up are going to want to set your operation mode. Remember this enclosure supports normal mode, JBOD, RAID 0, and RAID 1. The way you select modes is by setting the dip switches at the back inside of the unit. So make sure you do not put the enclosure back together before setting your mode. To set your mode have the dip switches on the correct setting and then hold and press the reset button (green) for about 15 seconds.

Vantec NexStar MX Dual 2.5-inch Hard Drive Enclosure

Here are the mode configurations taken from the included instructions.

Vantec NexStar MX Dual 2.5-inch Hard Drive Enclosure

Once your mode is set close the enclosure back up and connect it to you PC. If nothing shows up when you plug in the drive you may have to go into Disk Management in Windows and initialize and format the drive.

Vantec NexStar MX Dual 2.5-inch Hard Drive Enclosure

Testing
To test the drive we used ATTO Disk Benchmark. Here are our results for all four modes:

read

write

As you can see we have some really great results here. We are pretty much maxing out the USB 3.0 transfer speed, this is why you are not seeing that much of a difference in the speeds in the different modes.

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