But before that—for the uninitiated—lets understand what a 3.5-inch enclosure is. '3.5-inch' is the form factor of the hard drive. A 3.5-inch hard drive is the one that goes into your desktop. The hard drives that go into laptops are 2.5-inch hard drives. In normal circumstances, i.e. inside your computer case, the hard drive is connected to the IDE or SATA port of the motherboard—depending on the type of hard drive you have—and is screwed to the computer case. But, what if you want a large capacity storage device that is also portable? One of the most cost effective options would be to use the very same 3.5-inch hard drive and mount it into an external 3.5-inch hard drive enclosure like the NexStar 3. The NexStar 3 can then be externally connected to the USB port of a computer and in NexStar’s case, also to an eSATA port.
Also lets see what eSATA is—eSATA stands for External Serial Advanced Technology Attachment. It’s an interface for external storage devices with its competitors being USB and Firewire. From the chart below you can see the maximum transfer speeds using each of the interfaces. The Vantec NexStar is SATA II ready. These are theoretical maximum speeds. We will benchmark the enclosure in real world conditions to see the actual speeds.
HELP!!!!!... I have this...(in midnight Blue) i keep the majority of my work on my nexstar and recently while plugging into my hardrive it has started to make funny noises (squeking) and now my computer will not recognise it....HELP SOMEBODY PLEASE!!!! 
