Use

To get the NextStar Vault up and running a 2.5” hard disk is needed. Installing the HDD is very easy. Flip the unit over and remove the back cover which easily comes off by pressing a tab. Here it is found out that the unit is not entirely made up of plastic because its back cover is partly made of aluminum. The aluminum not only keeps the hard drive firmly in place it works as a heat sink to keep the drive cool. So with the cover off the HDD easily slides right into the SATA data and power connectors. The cover is snapped back into place and the hard disk installation is complete.


With the USB cable connected to the computer and the Vault, a blue power LED illuminates indicating power. While the hard disk is being accessed, the power indicator glows a more violet color. Below the power LED is another LED that is labeled "Invalid." This LED illuminates when a key is pressed and is used to indicate a wrong code being entered. The LED would be better labeled "Function" or something like that as it serves more than an indicator of a bad key-code. Within the instructions are a list of things the Invalid LED can show. On first startup, the hard drive is automatically divided into two separate partitions. One partition is public and is accessible by anyone. The other partition labeled "Private" can only be accessed by pressing the correct six digit code using the keypad. Any six digit combination will work and can be set easily by inputting the default key code, then inputting the code of the users choosing.

Performance

To test the performance of the Vantec Nexstar Vault, we used a single 2.5" Hitatchi 7200 80GB hard disk drive. Performance was measured using HDTach 3.0.4.0 and ATTO Disk Benchmark.

USB 2.0

For an enclosure aimed at security, the Vantec NexStar Vault really exceeds in performance, especially for a 2.5" enclosure. With 34.9 MB/s read performance, the NexStar Vault is in the upper echelon of hard disk enclosures we have reviewed. Looking at the ATTO Disk Benchmark results we can see that write performance is not lagging behind either and does a rather nice job using the USB 2.0 interface. CPU utilization is also a bright point of the NexStar Vault, coming in at only 4%, the internal data controller within the Vault does a great job.