Antec MX-1 USB/e-SATA 3.5-Inch Hard Drive Enclosure

 (119 customer reviews)

Customer Video Review Length:: 3:06 Mins

The video speaks for itself. Basically, I prefer this over my Thermaltake for one reason: The ease of swapping drives in and out of it when I need to. Right now it's sitting in my entertainment unit with my media PC, and it contains my entire life collection of stuff. It may not be the most attractive or the most durable. But if you need flexibility there really are no better out there. If you want something that's built like a tank and looks like a rock concert then get the Thermaltake N0012USU Max 4 Active Cooling 3.5-Inch USB 2.0 eSATA Hard Drive Enclosure instead.

UPDATE - 10/9/2011:

Yes, I still have this enclosure. I actually had forgotten about it until recently. I moved it from my entertainment unit to just below my iMac, and I had it persistently connected and powered on...Read more

My house doesn't have the best air conditioning, so I've long been looking for a decent active-cooled hard drive enclosure. After reading a favorable review of the MX-1 at Silent PC Review, I decided to buy two of these enclosures (paired with two very quiet WD Caviar SE16 drives) to use for backup and music storage with my MacBook Pro. I'm quite pleased. The drives run cool and relatively quietly -- while they aren't silent, the hum of the fan tends to blend in to the ambient noise of my study. And if you use the eSATA interface, you'll find the performance to be equivalent to that of an internal drive, which is nothing short of spectacular if you've previously only used Firewire or USB2 drive enclosures.

The MX-1 enclosure isn't quite perfect. As the product photo makes clear, the enclosure is not particularly attractive; it reminds me, in fact, of a VHS tape rewinder, and it's almost as bulky. You'll probably want to tuck your enclosure away and out of plain view...Read more

This enclosure works great with the USB cable. If you have an eSata port on the back of your computer (directly on the motherboard) it works even faster. But if you hope to use the included eSata back-panel bracket that plugs into a regular sata port in your motherboard, be aware that sata is not eSata, and this *will not work* with some chipsets. In particular, it doesn't work with the nForce4 Ultra chipset or the Sil 3114 that are found on a Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra-9 motherboard. It seems to depend on whether the timings of your motherboard sata ports happen to fall within the timing specs for eSata --- this can happen, but it is not guaranteed.