A Solid, fan-cooled, 3.5" SATA Hard Drive Enclosure

If you're a computer DIY'er like me, you're bound to have a bunch of outdated SATA hard drives collecting dust. While you use a SATA-to-USB connector kit for occasional use, nothing beats a good external case for permanent duty.

Overview
Enter the Antec MX-1 Actively Cooled Hard Drive Enclosure. As the name suggests, the main selling point of this external hard drive case is the integrated fan that's designed to keep the hard drive up to 15 degree C cooler than a fanless passive case. That's important because heat hastens hard drive death, and touching a passive external case after the drive has been working for a while can be a downright burning experience.

The MX-1 is designed to fit a standard 3.5" Serial ATA (SATA) internal hard drive (not included). This is the most common hard drive used in desktop computers today. It will not work with the older hard drive interface (PATA) nor the 2.5" drives found in laptops.

It requires AC power, as do all 3.5" enclosures. It will connect to your computer via either USB 2.0 or the relatively new eSATA standard that offers performance similar to an internal hard drive.

What's Included
The MX-1 is a fairly pricey enclosure, so it's nice that Antec included all of the cables you will need. It comes with a standard USB 2.0 cable, an eSATA cable, and if you don't have a computer with an eSATA port, there's even an eSATA slot converter. Provided that you have a desktop PC with a free internal SATA port and an available PCI slot, the converter will connect the internal SATA port to an external facing eSATA port. The converter doesn't actually use a PCI slot, however, since the port converter must occupy the space where the back of a PCI card would sit, you won't be able to use the slot behind the converter.

Next, there's the AC power supply and it has both a long outlet cord and a long cord from the supply itself to the enclosure. That means you can easily position the enclosure anywhere on your desk and be able to reach both your computer and a power outlet. That's a definite plus!

Four screws are included to anchor the hard drive to the internal drive tray, and there's a plastic stand bracket that will let you stand the case up vertically if you choose.

Finally, there's the enclosure itself, which measures 2.25" (H) x 5.75" (W) x 8.7" (D). That doesn't make it the slimmest external case I've seen, but considering it's got a fan, that's not bad.

Installation
Installation is relatively straightforward. To install a hard drive in the case, you'll need a phillips-head screwdriver. You must remove one long retaining screw from the bottom, then the top lid slides back and off of the case.

At this point, the instructions show that you should disconnect the leads to the LED and fan off of the electronics board so that you can slide the drive tray out of the enclosure. That was a no-go for me. I spent several frustrating minutes trying to pull, pry, and yank the connectors out of the circuit board clips to no avail. When it became clear that I might damage something, I gave up trying to disconnect the leads.

You can actually move ahead with the installation without disconnecting the leads, although you'll need to be careful since the drive tray will be tethered to the enclosure. From this point, you unscrew two screws to free the drive tray and then slide the tray back and off of the bottom of the enclosure. You then mate the SATA connector of the drive to the connectors on the drive tray.

Using four screws provided, you anchor the drive to the tray from the bottom. Both the drive-side and the underside of the tray have silicone grommets to absorb vibrations and cut down on noise. With the drive anchored, you carefully replace the drive tray in the enclosure, replace the tray screws, replace the lid, and then finally replace the bottom retaining screw.

Operation
Antec lists that the enclosure will plug and play to Windows 200/XP/ME/Vista. I don't know if it will work with any other OS, but I suspect that it would.

You can use either USB 2.0 or eSATA to connect the enclosure to your computer, but the diagram warns that you should not connect both types of interface cables at the same time. If you use eSATA, if you have a RAID controller card or a RAID-capable motherboard, Antec says that you can use RAID.

For my Vista system, I chose USB 2.0, connected the appropriate cable, powered up the enclosure using the thoughtfully included rocker-type power switch on the back, and Windows automatically installed the appropriate drivers. From there, I used the Windows Disk Management console (Start > Run > diskmgmt.msc), and was prompted to initialize my new hard drive. From there, I added a new volume to the drive, formatted it, and it then appeared as a new drive on my system. Cake!

Performance
I haven't had a chance to do any rigorous testing, but so far the performance is in line with my expectations of a USB 2.0 external hard drive. I will update this review once I've had a chance to do some further testing as well as exercise the eSATA connection.

Noise-wise, the fan noise is not completely silent, but it's not that bad. Certainly, if you're concerned about noise for, say, a home theater application, you probably will want a well-designed passively cooled case instead. And although the grommets definitely isolate a lot of noise, the amount of drive noise and vibration you'll hear will depend on the characteristics of the drive you put into it. I can feel the vibration from the Seagate drive I put into, as well as the familiar seek sounds that I've gotten used to from it.

And how well does the fan-assisted cooling work? Even under heavy activity, it's hard to distinguish the outside temperature at a flat-palm touch from when the case is off and at room temperature. That's a huge difference from the passively-cooled Seagate FreeAgent case next to it, which is uncomfortable to touch during use.

Aesthetics
Although the enclosure is a bit chunky, it's not overwhelmingly big. Once a drive is added, the plastic case has a very solid and well-constructed feel to it, without being heavy. The size and weight don't interfere with portability, and you probably won't think twice about disconnecting it and taking it with you if you wanted to.

The top lid has an attractive, dark, brushed metal look. The band around the edge of the case is a medium-gray, made up of what Antec calls "carbon-glass." The rest of the visible parts of the case are made up of the glossy black plastic that just about every electronic device seems to be sporting these days.

One of the few criticisms of this enclosure I have is the placement and brightness of the LED drive activity light. It's placed under the lip of the front panel of the drive, which means that it's not easily visible depending on how you position the drive. It's also pretty dim compared to most external drive LEDs. While it's welcome not to have a blinding power or activity light that will light up a dark room, it's almost to the other extreme.

Conclusion
Putting price aside, I have very few issues with this enclosure. It's well-designed, and aside from a couple of flaws (the internal fan/LED wiring connectors and the dim LED), it's easily the best single 3.5" drive case I've used.

However, with MX-1 retail prices above the half-century mark, you begin to feel like you're paying for everything you get. Even with the 3-year parts and labor warranty and all cables included, I have a hard time swallowing more than about 40 bucks on any external drive case. Fortunately, if you shop around, you can find some good deals on the MX-1. If you can find a sale or rebate and are in the market for something to make use of the spare SATA drives you have lying around, this one is your best option.