So, when I bought my NAS I started transferring over everything I wanted to keep on it. But then I realized that 500 GB would not be enough room to store everything. Instead of returning the NAS and getting a bigger one, which I did not have money for, I decided to keep the 500 GB NAS for only the things that I really wanted to have available on my home network (pictures, music, and videos). The other stuff that was more just there for storage (program installs, backups) could be put on a external hard drive. So I headed back to Fry’s looking for a USB hard drive enclosure. Here is the one I ended up with.

I bought the Vantec NexStar MX HDD enclosure from Fry’s for 3 reasons.
1. The price: I got the unit for $30. Not sure if it was a sale or if they were making way for the new NexStar with eSATA. Either way I feel like it was a good price for the features.
2. Dual SATA enclosure. Most enclosures I found in this price range would either only hold 1 hard drive, or would only use IDE hard drives. I had 2 SATA drives sitting in my closet that I needed to use. So this would let me use both of them without buying two enclosures.
3. Build quality. The whole unit is brushed aluminum and the enclosure alone seemed thick enough to stop a bullet. Well maybe not bullet proof but it felt good enough to hold my monthly backups.

I don’t feel like re-inventing the wheel with the review so I am just going to link to a couple much more thorough reviews than I could have ever done and tell you my thoughts.
Here are a few reviews for you to read on your own time. Virtual-Hideout, thinkcomputers, and futurelooks.

Overall, I am completely satisfied with my purchase. The drive is a little bit loud but I rarely have it plugged in anyway because it is only for occasional backups and long time storage. If you are looking for something that you want on all the time I would spend the extra money for a unit with more than just USB and something quieter. But if you have a couple extra SATA hard drives and need some long time storage than this is probably the device for you. The software it comes with is Windows only so I didn’t care for it but I was surprised to get any software at all for $30. The price on amazon is $70 and that is probably more than what I would pay for this enclosure. I feel the enclosure is easily worth $50 though if you can find it in that price range.

Let me know in the comments if you have any questions or what your experience with your external enclosure was like.