Vantec 3.5-Inch SATA 6GB/s to USB 3.0 HDD Enclosure, Black (NST-366S3-BK)

Excellent 3.5" USB 3.0 drive enclosure for a great price. There's no cooling fan to make any noise and the drive, itself is completely silent in this enclosure (of course, YMMV depending on the drive you put in it. I like the sturdy construction and it was very easy to install the drive. I am using it as an external drive for an Xbox One and it works flawlessly. Before that, I temporarily used it with my Mac and it was flawless there, too. If I have any complaint about it (and this is pretty minor) it's that the drive light on the front is REALLY BRIGHT, particularly when I having sitting in a Entertainment Center shelf on top of the Xbox. I put a piece of electrical tape over the area where the light is to help, but since the light is actually recessed behind the front "grill" of the enclosure, some light still leaks out around the sides of the tape (and I don't want to cover anymore of the front for fear of blocking too much air flow). Like I said, this is a pretty minor nit pick, so I'm giving it 5 stars anyway.

While many hard drive enclosures MAY support a 8TB drive, few seem to explicitly state that they will. After a LOT of research I landed on this Vantec enclosure for a Seagate 8TB Desktop HDD SATA 3.5" Drive. This enclosure is very easy to assemble. The drive slips right into the case and then gets screwed in with a couple of screws. A metal sleeve then goes over all that and a couple more screws completes the installation.I plugged this enclosure to my iMac (Late 2009) via USB 2. The enclosure also supports USB 3, but my iMac doesn't. The drive was immediately recognized and I was able to format it to the full 8TB. The enclosure does a good job with dealing with sleep and wake on the mac and it has a blue LED light to show drive activity. The metal case with vents seems to be more than enough to keep the drive from getting too hot, although the drive I'm using is a bit noisy.This Vantec is well built, easy to use, but most importantly IT WORKS!

I echo the view of others who have owned Vantec in the past and are a bit disappointed with the drop in quality. I had to move up a notch in drive specs. My previous Vantec was the CX NST-300SU Vantec NexStar CX NST-300SU-BK 3.5-Inch SATA to USB 2.0 and eSATA External Hard Drive Enclosure (Black), which is USB 2.0; I needed to move up to USB 3.0. (1) The solid push-in power switch in the back of the earlier model has been replaced by a small slider switch, which is much more difficult to operate when you're trying to shut down a drive without shaking it. (2) There's that plastic inner liner. I didn't have problems with the screw inserts as another reviewer did, but then enclosure screws should never be turned tight, just secure. (3) The power adapter is about the same size as earlier adapters, but mine came with an original U.S. 2-pin plug-in section in which one of the pins was plastic - that's right, museum piece, photo attached. Amazon replaced it without fuss.Having said all that, the enclosure and drive work fine, it's quiet. I place my drives on a silicone baking sheet, which absorbs vibration and resonance from the wooden shelf.

I only buy Vantec enclosures. Why? They are quality enclosures at a good price point. The 6G enclosure is sleek and modern looking, kind of like Vantec decided to hire Lian Li to design the enclosure. The front grill offers plenty of airflow to cool 7200 RPM drives, and the blue LED activity indicator on the front is not a distraction at all given you are not staring right at it. Mounting the drive is also as easy as 6 screws, and yes, it comes with instructions, but you probably won't need them. If you need a good USB 3.0 only enclosure that is SATA III compatable and offers a simplistic, no-BS look and good cooling, look no further than this guy. Add it to the list of quality Vantec enclosures that I've worked with for years.

Tested after I received the box. Worked as expected. USB 3.0 is fast, and is close to my sata drive. After all the testing I ran a backup to it and shut it down. After my 1tb drive failed I went to see if I had a backup of some files, my computer wouldn't recognize it. Moved it to my Linux box and the OS wouldn't recognize, either. I realize that it could be the drive, but I have never seen issues with this drive.The quality of the drive case was acceptable. The stand was adequate. I do like the case, good enough to let Amazon send me another. If the drive is bad I will find out soon enough. If it fails again, I won't replace it.

Update 11/29/2022: Still chugging along! Infact, I have ordered several more of these since my original purchase. Still no regrets!Update 3/3/2019: 3 years and still going strong! At some point I swapped out the 500Gb drive I originally put in here for a 2Tb drive. Have had zero problems with this enclosure!I bought this enclosure to use with my Xbox One console. I installed an older 500Gb SATA II 7200rpm drive, plugged it in to one of the rear USB ports, and restarted the console. It had no problems recognizing the drive and moving the installed games over. The drive was already formatted as NTFS, so the Xbox didn't need to reformat the drive to use it. Even though the drive is only SATA II compliant, the faster rotation speed and USB 3.0 connection do make for a noticeable (though only slightly) speedup in game load times.The only issue I have with this enclosure is due to the marketing and not the enclosure itself. The write up says that the "Aluminum Casing Cools Down Your Hard Drive". The problem with this is that while the case IS aluminum, the insert that touches the installed drive is plastic. Without metal on metal contact between the drive and the case, there is no cooling benefit to the aluminum case.

If I wanted an open box item I would have purchased an open box item.

I have two of these now. One is a couple of years old and the other is brand new. Both work perfectly with 4tb drives in them. Transfer speeds beyond 100mB per second are common on large files and they are very ruggedly built.Easy to recommend to friends and clients.

It's simply amazing. Super fast, easy to operate, convenient, trouble free and cool. I like it.

I purchased this to replace a much older external drive cover that would no longer work with windows. Poseidon words easy to use Assemble and work flawlessly with USB 3. Transfer speeds were satisfactory. I would recommend this item to anyone looking for a cover for a five and a half inch Drive.

Fit and finish are great but even after using the provided screws to secure everything, the case still isn't completely secure. You can hear some movement which comes from the size difference between the inner sleeve and outside case. But overall great product.

Works great so far. Much nicer to put together than my old USB 2/eSATA enclosure. They seem to detect when you turn the computer/console off and then power off the drive as well which is great.