As drive prices become cheaper, the chances go up that you will have spare drives sitting around in a drawer. Now the options are either to get an external enclosure of some sort, toss the thing, or get an adapter that will allow you to make use of it without too much difficulty. Vantec has sent us their latest solution to the problem. The NexStar CB-SATAU3 is a SATA to USB 3.0 adapter that allows you to reuse these older (or brand new) drives on the go without taking up space inside your desktop.

Why is USB 3.0 a big deal? Well to some it might not be... yet. It is rather new, so not many machines out there have it. If your machine doesn't have it, providing you have the room in your case, you can get an adapter card. USB 2.0 has a peak speed of 480MB/sec while USB 3.0 has a peak speed of 5Gb/sec. Those numbers speak for themselves.


In this case Vantec revised their SATA to USB 2.0 adapter that connects to the back of a drive. The adapter kit arrived in the attractive retail box shown above. There is a photo of the adapter on the front with features and specifications listed on the reverse . The specifications for the device can be found below.



Next we will move to the unboxing.