Vantec NexStar LX NAS Hard Drive Enclosure

**Doctor Feelgood**

When connected via USB, the NexStar LX functions simply as an external hard drive with no server capabilities, but it does offer excellent data transfer speeds. When connected via Ethernet, the true power is unleashed and you can take full advantage of the SMB and FTP server applications built in to the device. - The Review

Spire · Posted: Fri, 04 Aug 2006 12:04:24 Post Subject:

Is there an SATA version of this enclosure?

I can't bring myself to buy an IDE drive.

I would love to find an enclosure that does SATA 2 and Gigalan.

Anythign exist yet that will do this? (and not cost a fortune).

msvillarreal · Rated PG Joined: 21 Aug 2006 Posts: 1

I just bought this unit and seems to be working fine thru the USB connection, but when i access it thru the ethernet connection after a very long period of activity the unit just get freeze. After that i need to do a power cycle.

If i access it thru the ethernet port doing work that does not demand long periods of activity the unit performs fine. It is just when i perform long access tasks when the unit fails.

Any idea? Is there a firmware update?

Thx.

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Mon, 21 Aug 2006 07:27:00 Post Subject:

I didn't see a firmware update, yet... and haven't experienced that problem. What I have seen recently is that if I set the drive to sleep after a certain amount of time, sometimes I have a hard time waking it back up. Has happened maybe 3 times, but I don't know what to blame yet, and I just power cycle it.

bruceleeon · Rated R Joined: 15 Jun 2003 Posts: 59

I actually like the fact that this is IDE. You will never reach the data transfer speed of the drive transfering data through USB or ethernet anyway. Why not save money, hit ebay for an ide drive and call it a day. Besides, I can't think of one enthusiast I know of that doesn't have at least 2 IDE drives in a drawer somewhere

Nocturna · Rated PG Joined: 02 Oct 2006 Posts: 2

I just got one of these units and I'm severely underwhelmed. I have read a lot of reviews and they are consistent in their general praise with the same warnings about slow net performance. My unit does not behave like this at all.

First I put in an old 8 GB Maxtor drive (9084OD6) I had lying around. This worked fine over USB but I could not create shares. I currently have a somewhat newer 20 GB Maxtor drive in it. This one had no trouble creating shares. The shares also show up on my LAN without too much hassle. The problem is that files that I store on the share get corrupted! Small text files work fine but executables can no longer be executed (say setup programs) and zip files can no longer be unzipped. The cygwin 'diff' program confirmed that binary files that should be identical are not.

I then tried ftp transfer. Copying a file using ftp and then copying it back also corrupts the file.

I have sent an email to Vantec and hope they respond soon. I suspect it's a hard drive compatibility issue but I really don't want to buy a new HD. The whole point of this box was to use a hard drive you have lying around collecting dust. The manual doesn't say anything about HD requirements other than setting them to master.

I formatted the drives to FAT32 and even had the enclosure do the formatting. DHCP on the unit is disabled. My LAN is pretty small and reliable.

Any tips on what I can try? Thanks!

bruceleeon · Rated R Joined: 15 Jun 2003 Posts: 59

A hammer?

Nocturna · Rated PG Joined: 02 Oct 2006 Posts: 2

I got the unit replaced by eWiz and the new one works fine. It's not a stellar product but it's cheap and now does what it's supposed to do. I kept a log in my blog (heh).

http://blog.tungstentech.com/CommentView,guid,8f7c768f-85bd-46d5-bfd5-34243ae478ee.aspx

opj38 · Rated PG Joined: 29 Jun 2007 Posts: 2

sorry posted wrong section:
hi, just bought a nexstar Lx harddrive encloser, have set it through router . 5 gig hard drive, i am able to access the file through my network, lapptop and desktop. How do I set it up to access it through the internet using ftp . Any help please on how to set it up . New to networking so step by step wolud be nice. Thanks in advance.

thimothy · Rated PG Joined: 09 Nov 2010 Posts: 3

I would like to recommend Vantec NexStar LX to all my fellow bloggers. It is a brilliant storage device. I have been using it over the last three years and in my view it is the best storage device available in the market right now. Itâ€™s most important advantage is that it is quick. Data can be transferred very fast and it really saves time. The only complaint I have about it is that when you connect it via Ethernet it becomes very slow.