Installation & Operation:
Installation is rather simple, but could be made even easier if just a little more room had been provided on all sides of the drive. As you can see below, the test drive (a 200GB Western Digital) just barely fits, with a minimal gap on all sides. In addition to easing the installation, a bit more space might help with airflow/cooling. The drive connects to the cables, and drops snugly into place. The IDE ribbon then has to be folded as shown in order to lay flat against the drive in order to allow the cover to snap on. If you look towards the top of the image, you can see the thermal sensor is placed against the short edge of the drive opposite of the data/power connections. This is the recommended installation per Vantec, and the length of the cable and design of the enclosure limits you from choosing too many other locations.
Four screws slip in through the bottom of the enclosure, and hold the drive securely in place against the aluminum heatsink. A large set of [] shaped feet hold the enclosure slightly off your installation surface in order to allow air to pass underneath, and eliminate vibration/noise.
As the final step of assembly, the top pops on and the whole thing is closed up. I am not sure what the proper method for getting the top off again is, but it looks like you may just have to pry it from the edges. My only concern is that this may break some of the rather flimsy plastic tabs that catch on the base to keep it closed.
I was skeptical that the passive heatsink would contribute anything, since it is on the PCB side of the drive, and there is minimal surface area to make contact with. But, after several hours of continuous data transfer the outer surface of the heatsink was warm, indicating that it was at least contributing something to cooling the drive.
While speaking of cooling, the fan also does its fair share to keep the drive cool. In auto mode, it rarely ramps up to full speed, and is extremely quiet. Setting the fan to high speed produces a good deal of noise, but you can also feel a decent amount of air coming out of the slot. Low speed mode is much quieter, but is actually louder than auto mode. I assumed auto mode would just take the fan between low and high speed, but it seems to be able to go even slower than low. For general use I left it in auto mode, as recommended by Vantec.
