Obese storage

The Antec Veris MX-1comes in a large black box with the active cooling part being proudly shown along with the product itself.

Inside you’ll find all the usual bits and pieces, including the unit itself, an instruction manual, a vertical stand, a power block and lead and a USB cable. The not so ordinary is the eSATA cable and PCI bracket.

The PCI bracket is used to convert an internal SATA port to the eSATA style. It allows older motherboards to support eSATA’s insane 3Gpbs transfer speeds. That said, you’ll need a hot-swap capable board as older SATA connectors will cause your PC to freeze when the enclosure is connected (we’re talking Pentium 4 478 old). If you do have one of these older type motherboards, fear not as the enclosure also supports USB 2.0 connectivity.

The Veris itself is fat. It looks like a standard enclosure that has had all the pies. It’s made of aluminium and plastic, with carbon-glass thrown into the frame for strength. The reason why the enclosure is a little chunky is because of its secret weapon.

At the bottom of the device is an 80mm radial fan that sucks air from inside the enclosure and blows it out the rear vents. The only way for the air to enter is from the vents on the top of the enclosure which are located at the back. This means that the air has to take a U-turn around the hard disc in order to escape. The result? Your hard disc is encased in a constant stream of cooled air.

If you like your hard disc enclosures to be vertical, rather than flat on your desk, you can use the included stand to make these dreams come true. The stand has foam pads inside to stop the enclosure being scratched, rubber feet to stop slippage and made out of shiny black plastic to match the device itself. All bases covered here.

Inside, you’ll find that the Veris only supports SATA drives which isn’t a major concern as IDE is falling out of fashion. As SATA power and data connectors are a standard, there are no cables inside. Instead, you simply slide the hard disc into place.

To make sure that no vibrations are passed from the drive to the enclosure, there are ultra-squidgy silicon pads, which fully detached the screws and hard disc from the MX-1 itself.

The front of the Veris has the Antec logo printed in white and a very small activity LED which should shine down onto your desk resulting in a sexy glow rather than a glaring beam of light.

The rear has three ports and one switch. The switches job is obvious, as are the other ports. There is one for eSATA, power and USB. None of these ports are marked in anyway, but their function is obvious from the widely different shapes.