Features:
The overall looks of the NexStar 3 enclosure is fantastic. I was blown away at the attention to detail and the overall styling of this case. The exterior is a gloss black colour with chrome rings around each end of the enclosure. The entire exterior casing is made of aluminum which also doubles as a type of heat sink for the hard drive helping to keep things cool. The NexStar 3 is available in red, blue, grey and black colours. As well, there are Nexstar 3 versions available for 2.5", 1.8" and 3.5" desktop drives (unit we have).

The top side has a large and stylish NexStar 3 logo on it as well as labels for the power and USB plugs on the back. This can all be seen in the images below.

The bottom of the enclosure is black with four rubber feet, one in each corner. The nice thing is that these cases are easily stackable. There are little indents on the top of the enclosure where the feet from another enclosure would sit in.

The front of the enclosure is again all black with a transparent Vantec logo at the top. When powered on this logo is illuminated a blue colour which flickers when the hard drive is writing, much like the HDD light that is probably on your computer case.

The rear of the enclosure has a USB plug at the far left and then at the far right there is a power adapter plug and a power switch. The nice thing about having a drive in an external enclosure is they are hot-swappable. That means, at any time when you are not reading or writing to the drive, you can simply un-install the device to make sure you are not accessing the drive, turn off the power switch and unplug it. No need to fully shut down the PC like you would have to do if switching an internal drive.

For those who wish to stand the enclosure vertically, Vantec includes a matching coloured stand to do so.

I'd just like to touch briefly on two major uses for external drive enclosures for those who are less familiar with them. One, they offer a great way to carry large amounts of data with you while on the go. Most USB thumb drives currently only go to around 4gb, but being able to stick a 300gb maximum drive in this particular enclosure gives you far more space! Second, they offer a safe way to backup your important files. Since the drive is external you can unplug both the USB and power cables after you have made your backup to completely isolate it. That means if your computer were to get damaged from say a lightning storm, it would not transfer onto the external drive. Then, once you get it fixed you can easily plug the drive back in and transfer back over your backups again.

Installation:
Installation of a drive into the NexStar 3 enclosure is fairly simple and doesn't take a long time to do.
The first thing you do is slide the back off which will pull out the internals which are all mounted to a sliding tray. One key note, you will want to make sure the drive being installed in the enclsoure is set to "master" as it will not work if that isn't set correctly. Second, plug both the IDE and power connector from the enclosure into the back of your hard drive. After that, use the 4 included screws to mount the drive securely in the metal tray. Then, slide the tray back in and when it's almost all the way in plug in the 3 pin lead for the front LED and push down any other cables which may interfere from it going in properly. Last, install the two screws in the back to hold everything securely inside. One very minor issue I had with the last two screws is I found I had to apply pressure at various areas of the enclosure to get them to line up perfectly with the holes on the body. That wasn't anything major, but if you have troubles getting those screws in then check to see that everything is lining up properly.

The only other steps are to plug the USB cable into the enclosure and your PC's USB plug and to plug the power adapter into the enclosure as well. Once the PC is powered on and the NexStar 3's power switch put in the "on" position Windows XP will automatically detect it as a removable drive.