Vantec NexStar 4 drive enclosure?

Jaums wrote on 12/19/2014, 8:17 AM
Has anyone used the Vantec NexStar 4 drive 3.5" enclosure?

http://www.vantecusa.com/en/product/view_detail/488

Now that hard drives are less costly and large capacity, I like the idea of having lots of my stock footage, previous projects and components readily available.

This enclosure is around $100, depending on where you buy it and with all 4 drives, has a total capacity of 16 TB (less if you choose to user smaller capacity drives).

It uses USB 3.0 and eSATA, is also available for a few more $$ with RAID capabilities.

Anyone tried this with Vegas?

RAID makes things much more complex, would it be needed here for HD footage with Vegas?

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

Comments

videoITguy wrote on 12/19/2014, 8:23 AM
I have tried the Vantec products as advertised, and due to the fact that they use a cheap older chip in the so-called backplane - they are useless for setting up Raid0 for speed. They can be okay but slow in Raid1. And they are really much slower than a given single drive in Sata to USb3 carrier with a newer more efficient chip set.
BEWARE - when I asked tech support - they totally clammed up and refuse to discuss it.
ddm wrote on 12/19/2014, 1:37 PM
I have a 2 drive Vantec enclosure that I've had for a while now and I love it. I have it attached via esata and it is the best external I have. It has usb 3 as well but that's been a disappointment, possibly bad (early usb 3) implementation. It disconnects occasionally and does not come close to the esata speed. Overall, I've been somewhat disappointed with USB 3 in general. Esata, on the other hand, even on my cheapest enclosures always seem to perform quite well, virtually the same thruput as I get on my internal sata drives.

I have the Vantec set up as a raid 0 for maximum performance and I've had zero (pardon the pun) issues. As for performance in Vegas, I regularly do 4 to 7 camera shoots and putting the footage on the raid box has greatly improved the multicamera performance of Vegas.

So, if you have the option of esata I would recommend it highly, USB 3, not so much.
videoITguy wrote on 12/19/2014, 3:00 PM
I did the comparisons between USB3 , Esata, and direct drive for these Vantec enclosures. My results show that Raid0 is seriously handicapped by the on-board chip no matter what connection you choose. Raid1 is effective in ganging multiple drives but is not that efficient at getting bang for the buck. You would do better with money spent on a single large direct drive.

Normally Esata is handicapped by the on-board chip and indeed that is what I found. A BARE DRIVE connected by esata cable is much better than the box chipset.

As I use enhanced USB3 aboard the motherboard - this box could not take advantage of that processing - hence USB3 performance was mediocre. A bare drive connected via an adapter to USB3 is the fastest most responsive outboard drive that I have found. Forget Vantec and the other knockoffs of this chipset.