Review: NewerTech MiniStack v2 External Hard Drive and Hub

Just like the iPod, the Mac Mini supports its own (smaller) industry of accessories. Since they are both small devices, but clearly extensible, many companies have risen to the challenge of providing accessories that match the Apple look, feel and extend the feature set.

With the Mac Mini, the most popular among these are the external hard drives and drive enclosures. The Newer Technology miniStack is one of the great external hard drive enclosures I have used. It has a tremendous feature set, comes with quality software, runs silent and cool. All that combined with the fact that it works with any Mac OS from 9.2 onwards and even on Windows machines when formatted correctly make it a true winner.

With the Mac Mini, the most popular among these are the external hard drives and drive enclosures. The Newer Technology miniStack is one of the great external hard drive enclosures I have used. It has a tremendous feature set, comes with quality software, runs silent and cool. All that combined with the fact that it works with any Mac OS from 9.2 onwards and even on Windows machines when formatted correctly make it a true winner.

There is no reason for the miniStack to be used only with the Mac Mini. Its form factor, however, is best suited to be placed under a Mac Mini. For people with other kinds of machines, you may prefer a vertical external drive so that it occupies less floor or desk space.

In addition to being a stellar hard drive enclosure, the miniStack is also a USB/Firewire hub. It has 4 USB 2.0 and 3 Firewire 400 ports on it which can be very useful on the Mac Mini which has only 1 Firewire port and 4 USB.

To install, I just plugged the device in to my Mac and switched it on. It automatically shows up in Finder and from then on, it works as expected. The model I tested had a 750GB drive inside, though the manual said that you could use a drive “up to 500GB” ATA. The web site says “up to 750GB”, so there. The 750GB model costs $599 and if you just want an empty enclosure to BYO drive, it will cost you $79.

On of the great features of the device is that it automatically shuts down when your Mac is shut down and turns back on when the Mac starts up. This allows you to put scripts, data and more on the drive that the Mac may require on start up.

The miniStack has an internal fan that is temperature-controlled, a vent at the back and a passive heat sink that allow the device to remain cool and silent. The fans only made a mild whirring sound when the hard disk was transferring data constantly for a long period in a room with less-than perfect cooling. In my tests, the enclosure never heated up either.

The drive that came with the miniStack was also quite silent. It was a 7200 RPM drive with a 16MB cache, and so was extremely fast over Firewire. Of course, if you only buy the miniStack enclosure without the hard drive, your noise, cooling and speed performance may depend upon the drive you choose.

If you get the miniStack with a drive built-in, it comes pre-formatted with tons of freeware, shareware, OS X updates, vintage Apple videos and promotional material. One great thing about this drive, though, is the bundled software. It comes with EMC’s backup software Retrospect and Intech Hard Disk SpeedTools.

The comparable low end models from LaCie do not have a fan, but are otherwise comparable in features. In any case, the miniStack’s ease of use, performance and extended feature set easily put it at the head of its class. I would definitely recommend it for Mac users in general and Mac Mini owners in particular.