Vantec NexStar JX, USB 3.2 Gen1x1, 3.5" or 2.5” SATA III HDD/SSD Drive Green Enclosure with eSATA (NST-358SU3-BK), Black

The company said this enclosure supports the drives up to 20TB. This is incorrect, it does support a 22TB Seagate IronWolf NAS drive, which is maximum size available nowadays, that I just installed and formatted inside enclosure. The speed from my NAS to this enclosure/drive is 255MB/sec on large files, which is not fantastic, but this is USB, so what could we expect? Also I had to format it as exFAT to make it compatible across different systems, not EXT3 or EXT4. That probably affected the speed pushing it down. The NAS has eSATA port, but I don't want to shut the NAS down just to connect to this port and I'm not sure how the NAS will react to this enclosure, since these 2 existing ports are designed for their brand DX enclosures/extenders, so the cable can be their own standard and not exactly eSATA. But I will verify that with Synology support. The main idea was to use this enclosure with a huge hard drive as a detachable backup drive and it works this way. I saw some customer's complaints about heat issues. Definitely a closed enclosure with no fan is not the best idea, but having a fan with magnetic field near hard drive would be a serious catch. On the other hand, the design could be better, the hard drive surface could be connected to the enclosure surface to provide a passive cooling, it would be enough here. A sliding in/out design will prevent me from adding a cooling pad to this enclosure, it won't work since both surfaces of the pad need to be carefully attached. I will keep that in mind, probably it will be an issue in my case too with this enormously huge hard drive, if so I will port an update to this review later. But so far so good, the surface of the enclosure is barely noticeable warmer in just one spot, comparing to the rest of the enclosure. It seems like a good sign. As promised - updating several days later. The enclosure is running non-stop with a 22TB drive inside for several days, ran a really huge backup with millions of files - no complaints, works pretty well. During the top load the temperature of the enclosure was slightly higher, than the room, while during the idle time the temperature of the enclosure is almost the same as the room temperature - no complaints here. I will definitely need to check the SATA port one day in the future, but I guess it will work, because the company has mentioned in the manual what port it is and how it is comparable with other SATA like ports, used in NAS. Very good point for the ESATA port usage. The average speed through the USB port is around 270-290 MB/sec, which is more or less ok for an external drive file backup.

I was looking to add an SSD to my Reolink NVR, and wanted to buy a Samsung 870 SSD. The Reolink NVR requires an eSATA connection, so that was a necessity to have. The downside to the Reolink NVR is the eSATA port does not provide enough juice to power the SSD. That meant I also needed a power source for the SSD. This box met all of the requirements I was needing. It was really easy to install the SSD inside the box. Once you put the 2 screws in to secure it down, put the box back together and plug it in. I kinda wish they made one just for 2.5" drives as the box is really large for what it is holding inside. They could have done a smaller design, imo. I don't think the instructions said it, but the black screws are for the 2.5" drives. Don't try to use the silver screws for a 2.5" drive. Overall, I like it. It's working quite well for what I am using it for. I highly recommend.

I put in a 14TB WD Purple drive and am using it as an external eSATA drive for Synology NAS to act as storage for Surveillance Station set up with 6 cameras. I have a couple of fans blowing on it so there is no issue with temperature; the drive reports around 41C. This isn't really part of the review, but might help someone: Surveillance Station does not normally allow for an external drive to be used as storage, but does allow "remote" storage. This is really a terrible oversight on Synology's part and I was very disappointed to learn about this only after purchasing the enclosure. If you search online you will find some workarounds that people did, but I didn't like any of them so I came up with my own. I created a remote storage link that actually points to the local external drive. Now Synology won't let you specify the same IP/hostname as the NAS itself for a remote folder, so you have to create a new DNS entry in your local network environment that simply points to the same device. For example my NAS hostname is simply diskstation, so I added another DNS entry called diskstation_ext that points to the same IP as diskstation. Also, for whatever reason you can only setup a CIFS remote share through "Recording" > "Archive Settings" > "Mount Remote Storage". So what I did after in File Station was to delete the remote folder created by Surveillance Station, and re-create it using the NFS protocol, using the same folder name. You'll want to check the "Mount automatically on startup" option in File Station, and UNCHECK it in Surveillance Station. I don't know if it makes a difference using NFS vs CIFS in this scenario, but NFS is generally considered a more performant protocol. So far, this setup seems stable and persists after reboots without issue.

I bought a cheaper hard-drive enclosure it wouldn't even spin the hard-drive this one work great and very fast I would have to say a great product.

Works as it should. Plug and play to my Reolink NVR, exactly what I needed.

Needed an enclosure with eSATA to install an OS on an old Intel Atom PC. The enclosure works great but the PC still sucks giving me a hard time. So far, I recommend this item.

I really love the features that this enclosure offers, especially as I wanted to have external eSATA connectors to allow for software RAID on my OMV server. I bought two in April 2025 and both worked flawlessly to December 2025 (8 months) when I thought the RAID drive lock ups I was getting were due to the Chinese 2A power supplies I had. But when I removed the hard drive from one of these enclosures, the SATA connector actually came off the internal board. So clearly the problems were related to bad soldering or joints on one of the devices I got. Now it seems it was bad connections. To be fair, the other one seemed fine, and the drive came out fine without that connector budging.

So far so good. I now have three of these USB/esata HDD cases, two I bought a year ago and just bought the third on 4/7/25. I'm using these with WD red pro 14TB and 20TB, and also an Ironwolf Pro 18TB drives for backup purposes. They are not used on a continual basis but it's not unusual when backing up they write continuously for 4-6 hrs and when checking hash values for 18-24 hrs reading continuously. No temperature problems I've noticed. Write rates when connected to USB port of my NAS are typically around 200-220MB/s, read rates on USB of my laptop are slower, around 160MB/s (older laptop).

Really nice quality, metal enclosure/plastic ends and the internals look solid. Came with a nice thick Esata cable and USB 3.0 cable. Only came with a US AC plug, so you'll to purchase an adaptor to suit your country or a AC plug of the same spec. Simple to install, just plug n play with a blue led light whilst in use. I used this to expand my storage on my Reolink NVR system and so far it's working floorlessly.

This enclosure does what it's supposed to do.The transfer speeds are excellent and it doesn't slow down.It may get hot if you do use it for a long time or in a hot climate.Being in Canada,heat is not a real problem here. :) Recommended.

Easy to install and works great. I am using it for my shaw PVR and have no problems with it .