Customer Reviews

5/7/2008 by Protecyon:

Great Product

The NST-D100SU is a wonderful product if you have multiple SATA hard drives lying around.

I work with embedded systems as a hobby, and I have large amounts of data backed up such as schematics, simulations, oscilloscope, and logic analyzer data. Also, I edit home videos for fun so I need a lot of hard drive space. Since I wanted my backed up data to last I've put my hard drives into enclosures so that I could access them only when needed, thus saving the hard drives from wear and tear. Eventually my desk became cluttered with enclosures. When I saw this product I immediately purchased it, and don't regret it one bit.

The installation is incredibly simple and the product comes with everything you need (all the cables, and even an esata bracket). Installing the esata bracket took less than 5 minutes, and anyone who can use a screwdriver to open up their computer case can perform the installation. After installing the bracket all you need to do is turn on your computer, wait till the OS loads, pop in the hard drive, and press the power button on the NST-D100SU. The OS immediately recognizes the drive and you're ready to go. When you're done just use the Safely Remove Hardware icon in your OS, and when you get the safe to remove prompt, power down the unit, and remove the hard drive.

Performance for this system is great using both the USB, and the esata port. The esata is about 4.5x faster than the USB, so if you can use it do so. I measured the performance of a Western Digital 500GB hard drive when it was connected directly to the internal sata port, and then again when it was connected via the NST-D100SU (via esata port) and the results were identical.

The unit costs around $40, which is on par with other esata enclosures on the market. However, this unit has the advantage since you can quickly swap hard drives, and when you're done place them into an ESD bag for safe storage. This is much cheaper and faster than buying multiple enclosures for each hard drive.

I definitely recommend this product for those who are thinking of building an external hard drive. The NST-D100SU is fast, cheap, and easy to use.