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Review on πŸ“¦ Vantec HDA-525P 3.5-Inch to 5.25-Inch Front Bay Converter Kit: Enhanced Storage Expansion Solution by Josh Tadder

Revainrating 1 out of 5

Not as great as I thought!

I have two of these (2 different computers). The cable is 24 inches long from the back of the metal case. So it's only about 29 inches front-to-back if you include a 5-inch metal chassis. Purchased with "Vantec 4 Port USB 3.0 PCIe with Internal 20-Pin Host Card (UGT-PC345)" http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CBNAP54?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00Updated 10/29/2016 : Bought over 3 years ago. Worked fine for 2 years and then I started hearing random shutdown sounds from windows. from my many external drives (mounted on the back). When I opened My Computer, all the drives were still there. So I wasn't sure what device was causing this until one day the hub suddenly went offline in the middle of the file copy attached to it. f. It was either a hub or a specific hard drive. Shutdown noises often occurred when nothing was connected to the hub, so I narrowed it down to one hub. I also noticed that the speeds sometimes didn't top USB 2 speeds. I noticed that a few other reviewers on NewEgg were having the same issues I was having with disconnect noise and mouse freezing or audio stuttering. Earlier this week, I experienced these side effects as well. I bought a second of these hubs for my work computer about 8 months ago because I had no problems with the original hub for 2 years. I had to copy many files to take home. After 5 minutes it said it would take a day to copy the files. The copying process was so slow (USB 1 speed) that I had to cancel and try again. This time the speeds were back to USB 3. So both failed even though I was 2 years away from the first. But 2 mistakes out of 2 are not very good odds. I've had about a dozen Vantec hard drive enclosures over the years and only one of them has failed. I am very disappointed this time. I'm reducing my rating to one star. I bought another brand's faceplate. If I run into problems with this new hub, I'll ditch the internal hubs and just switch to an external hub mounted on a command stripe case.

Pros
  • Consistent test results
Cons
  • Could have chosen a newer model