Home > Consumer Reviews > Vantec NexStar DX NST-530S2 5.25-Inch SATA to USB 2.0 Optical Drive External Enclosure (Black)

Its huge in real life. But it should be expected since it has to house 5.25" products. But still, its black color make it look pretty nice and svelte.

One thing though, the huge blue led on the front of the product can light up your entire room and its constantly in operation. At least it matches the small led on my Plextor drive which is in this enclosure at the moment.

Also, the power supply is internal. It uses a standard pc power supply cable. I have no idea whether its switching or not, but I hope it is since most ther of these products are. 127V/50Hz here, I've been using it all of today and no problems yet electricity wise.

Initially, I have had a few problems with my pc recognizing the DVD burner inside it, but after a restart, its all gone. I have it connected to a CyberPower 7 port usb thingie CyberPower High-Speed 7-Port USB Hub (highly recommended), which connects to my computer.

The fan is pretty much silent, or at least I have not heard it announce its presence yet.

So far so good. Its big and beautiful. The led is obtrusive, but you can like tape it if it bothers you.

This enclosure built like a tank! I bought this to house my LG blu-ray drive. This enclosure fits my blu-ray drive like a glove. It is very quiet, even quieter than my laptop. The aluminum housing dissipates all heat, the enclosure is still cool to the touch even after 2,3 hours running. The blue light shows it is powered on and very bright in a dark room, but it helps remind you that you need to turn it off if not used.

Data transfer is very fast, nothing to complaint there. The thing I am happy most about this enclosure is it uses a regular power cable. The converter is embedded in the enclosure. This saves some much space on your multi-outlet.

I am so glad I found this on Amazon.

I just got this the other day and it was very simple to install my own DVD-RW drive in it. It has it's own power supply so it does not rob power from my Netbook. I saw the external DVD-RW drives with only 8X so I chose to install my own 16X DVD-RW drive in this enclosure. Works fine and I am very happy with the solid construction of this enclosure. ( Metal Case ).
You may want to go for the External DVD-RW drive that works off the USB on your netbook or notebook so you don't have to deal with the extra power cord. I'm still giving it 5 Stars for the ease of installtion and sturdy construction. Oh, make sure you have a SATA drive and not an IDE drive.

I purchased this enclosure to attach an internal Blu Ray writer to my laptop. It was very easy to install and once connected to my computer through an USB port, the drive was recognized and ready to be used without any issues. The fan of the enclosure is very quiet, you cannot really hear it. It is very well designed and constructed. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to add an internal drive like a Blu Ray writer externally through an USB port. Highly recommend.

I WON'T buy external enclosures that don't have a self-contained power supply. I'm sick of all the proprietary and space-hogging wall-wart AC adapters, and in a storage box an external supply is a serious misfeature. This enclosure uses a standard computer AC power cord and that's it! Sure, it's not exactly small, you can find much smaller enclosures out there (though none that can handle a 5.25" DVD drive!), but I have a batch of these and hope they never discontinue them, because it's hard to find enclosures with internal power supplies.

Because of the internal supply, it means that STORAGE of these boxes is really convenient-- the box is basically it, and it's designed to look like a book so you can just put them up on a bookshelf and you don't have to keep the wall-wart with in order to keep it from getting lost. Also, they stack well so if you want to keep several online at once it's solid and stable.

I use them with both Windows and Linux, mostly with hard drives but I have a spare DVD drive in one as well. Never had a problem with the software recognizing it. I backup and archive to hard drives, and buy a new one every 6 months or so and an enclosure to keep the process going. So I've accumulated 4 of these so far, and am about to get a couple more.

The price seems to have gone up now that it supports SATA, but it's well worth it. The several PATA models I've purchased are all still working great, and I plan to add several SATA models.