When the Vantec NexStar MX (NST-400MX-S2) first came out I was quite excited. A dual drive housing, “how great will that not be for backups?” Then I discovered that it did not have RAID 1 support. I then looked at some of the entry level NAS devices, but they were more than I needed and cost quite a bit more. Fortunately not too long after the S2 they released a new version the SR (NST-400MX-SR) which supported RAID 0 and RAID 1. I sent Vantec USA a few technical questions specifically around RAID rebuild times and what happens in the event of a disk failing. They were pretty quick to respond. The disk light would go off in the event of a disk failing and the rebuild time was about 1GB/m. I also asked if the drive would rebuild without being attached to a machine and they said it would.
So I recently purchased the SR version and proceeded to setup 2 x 250GB SATA disks in RAID 1 (mirroring). I initially flipped through the instructions and then installed the drives in the housing. Everything was easy to install and the manual was reasonably clear and I set the jumpers to RAID 1. When I first attached the housing to my machine and started up disk management in Windows I was presented with 2 drives. I suspected I had not set the jumpers correctly but proceeded to create partitions and format the disks anyway to test it out. I then shut the housing down and opened it up and checked the jumpers and found that I had in fact not set them correctly, so I set them and pressed the little reset switch as per the documentation, but was still presented with two drives in Windows. After going through all the jumper options I could still only get two single drives. I even went as far as wiping the disks with the Seagate tools and starting again, no joy. I mailed Vantec twice, but their speedy support was now something of the past and I received no replies whatsoever. I then sent the housing back to the supplier and asked them to make it work. Two days later the housing was back and declared working. So I started it up and sure enough it was now in RAID 1. I then queried the technician who had worked on it and the trick was to press the reset button while the unit was powered on! Something that was not stated in the documentation (they suggest you press it before installing the drives). So I tested it for myself and sure enough it worked. It was actually quite cool starting up disk manager, setting the jumpers, pressing the reset switch and watching the disk config change suddenly. Obviously doing this destroys any data you had on the drives!
So the next thing to do was to simulate a drive failure and the subsequent rebuild with RAID 1. What you will notice immediately when coping data to the housing is that both drive lights will burn solid, once the copy is complete they will turn off. I then shut the housing down, removed one of the drives and started it back up again. Contrary to what Vantec support claimed, the drive light did not go off, instead it would flash on/off. Thus I would suggest each time you start your housing up let it flash through the initiation sequence and wait for both lights to stop flashing. If one continues to flash on/off at steady intervals, you have a failed drive. If you copy data to the housing while a disk is in a failed state the good drive will burn solid and the failed disk will continue to flash. I then shut the housing down reattached the drive and started it up again. It probably took about a minute or two before the rebuild started. Both lights will burn solid similar to when coping data. I did also test ejecting the housing while a rebuild was in progress (I used USB) and as soon as I did that the lights would stop flashing, so I had no idea if the rebuild was still running or not. I suspect that once again Vantec were incorrect and it’s best you leave the drive attached while the rebuild runs. I would also advise against copying data to the housing during the rebuild as this will only slow the rebuild down and potentially cause other unforeseen problems.
After all that struggling I am however very happy with the unit. The only minus (and most of the reviews mentions this) is that the fan is quite loud. I don’t leave the housing on for long (it’s just there for backups) so I don’t have to bare it for long 
I hope this post helps someone else in the future!
Edit:
After some futher digging on the internet I found some posts on Newegg suggesting that Silicon Image SteelVine Manager is able to show you the RAID status of the NexStar MX. To find this go to:
Silicon Image Support Page
- Select SiI5723 Storage Processor
- Then Configuration Manager
- Then your desired OS (I selected Vista)
- I then downloaded SiI57xx SteelVine Manager for Windows 5.1.24B
For convenience a direct link can be found here
Hi.. just wanted to thank you for your writeup about this product. I just purchased it yesterday and had a HELL OF A TIME trying to set it up due to poor documentation. No where in the instructions does it mention anything about resetting the unit while it is actually powered on.
Thank you again, and you saved me the hassle of returning it to the store!
Thank you, with out your information I too would have been seaching for answers as to why I could not get the RAID 1 configuration to work. I think they seem to have a good product, they would improve their sales if they had better documentation in the box and on the web site.
hello,
thanks for this blog, its helped me answer a few questions i had on this unit. soo you mentioned this in your blog, but just to clarify, if you press the reset button on the unit, you will lose all your data? i have two hdd’s running in raid 0 in my unit but i needed to connect a different hard drive (sata) to my laptop and thought i might be able to take the raid drives out of the mx, use it has a single drive enclosure, and then when i was finished re-install the raid drives. but to do that i would have to change the jumpers and press the rest button, thus destroying the raid array and all data on the drives??
if you could help me out, id really appreciate it!
Hi Dan
I understand what you want to do, but unfortunately I did not test that scenario so I can’t say for sure what will happen. What I suspect you might be able to do is simply shut the unit down, remove both drives attach the single drive without changing the jumpers or pressing the reset button and seeing if windows will let you access it.
Otherwise the safest thing might be simply to buy or borrow a single disc enclosure to copy the data from your single disc.
Here is my experience with Nexstar MX enclosure and reponse to dan’s questions.
I initially had one 750G Western digital drive installed and set the jumpers for single drive operation.
The intention was to run the enclosre in Raid 1 mode and was looking to purchase the second drive, no stock everywhere I checked.
While I had the single HD I decided to experiment. I copied some data across to the single drive while in single drive config. , opened the enclosure, set the jumpers for Raid 1 mode, pressed the reset button while the power was on and the drive was in the enclosure.
Rebooted the computer, sure enough a single drive was visible and available to copy to.
One of the blue LEDs at the front of the enclure would flash on and off indicating one of the drives was faulty as expected in Raid 1 mode, even though I had never installed a second drive previously.
I recently purchase the second drive, installed it in the enclosure, left the jumpers as they were in raid 1 configuration and pressed the reset button while the enclosure was powered.
The two blue LEDs flicked for a while and after they stopped I rebooted the PC.
One drive was availabe and the data that I had copied previously was intact.
This leads me to believe that the data is not lost on a single drive installed in the enclosure when changing to a Raid 1 configuration and adding the second drive.
That being the case I think the enclosure works perfectly as intended and am very happy with it.
I hope the information helps.
Hi John
Thanks for the information. I would have thought that in RAID 1 mode as soon as you added the second disc it would start the rebuild without you having to push the reset button. It is interesting that your partition information was retained after pressing the reset switch. It might indicate that the housing only wipes the partitions if you change the RAID mode.
I would however advise people to make backups before simply hitting that reset switch
Has anyone had any problems with one of the SATA ports going out? All of a sudden port 1 showed “DISCONNECTED” in the SteelVine manager (thanks for sharing the tip about that software, btw). I swapped the drives and the port 0 drive showed the drive previously connected to port 1 as connected, but unexpected drive serial number (as expected). If I can’t return this thing to Microcenter, I’m afraid I’ll have to send it to Nexstar — and I don’t imagine that will be a fun experience.
I wonder how many people have brought this unit and set the dips for RAID 1 and left it at that. I noticed that both the LEDs never flashed about 3 months after owning\using this enclosure and decided to check the dips again just to make sure. Long story short the manual is a shocker and the fact that the KB at the Vantec website has not been updated with an entry about this is also pretty shoddy. Thanks for the write up and the info on the SteelVine Manager has made this prod. for me. Why it isn’t included by default mystifies.
Cheers!
Manual sucks, did my research so and read this post
Thx for the help, RAID 1 is working perfectly. My LED’s on the unit where installed incorrectly so, Power LED was in the HDD slot. Fixed it my self…. The SteelVine manager is useful!
Man, Your Article Help SOOOO much, and yes the manual was really bad in explaining small important things. Thanks for you hard work in researching this issue. I too had a hard time with setting up the RAID 1.
Thanks Again!!!!!
Regarding the Steelvine application, do you know if this works only over SATA, or over USB as well?
-Tomaj
I did a little research on the Steelvine application / chip, from the documentation it appears that USB is supported. I’ll post back once we’ve got our 8 devices simultaneously connected. If this actually works, it could be a good low cost / high availability alternative to a single large raid card and external storage array.
Thanks for posting this, I would have set up my unit thinking I had RAID 1 when I actually needed a reset with the unit ON! I suspected the “one light” was fishy but you save me a headache on the phone most likely!
Cheers!
I have it working over USB on Vista. Good luck with the testing
hi, anyone knows what size for the fan is since I’m thinking of replacing the fan maybe with a better one. how is a fan size determined the actual diameter of the fan fins or the length of the fan housing itself?
but anyway this has helped me greatly nothing in the manual said to press reset while the switch is son stupid manufu*kturer…
I installed a couple of 1.5tb drives in the enclosure a couple days ago, running raid 1. I emailed Vantec support on the reset button procedure.
Vantec were very quick to respond to my support EMail also.
I was told to install the drives, change the dip switch to raid 1 mode, then hold the reset button, and power up the unit. Holding the button for about 10 seconds. This worked and I was able to see the drive in Windows Vista disk manager.
The two blue hard drive lights were on constantly (after the flashing seen during intialization on powering up the device). During some large disk copies, one of the lights would flash, and the transfer would be stalled. Then today one of the lights goes out. I installed the Silicon Image software you linked, to see what was going on. The report was that ‘verification’ was being performed on the disk. I waited for the verification to complete which took many hours. Then after that complete, both hdd lights went out on the device!
Now.. It appears that the lights appear lit only during disk activity - they are not lit constantly.
I am not sure what change happens beyond what you’ve said when one of the disk fails. I will probably use the Silicon Image software to show the status. The software is also handy to identify the serial number on the failed disk - otherwise it would be hard to know if hdd 1 or 2 belongs to which bay.
Ok, the advice given here led me to the solution in my case, but was not precise enough. I will clarify the procedure one step further.
First, my situation:
I had the error message, after installing SteelVine, of “Mismatch” (shown in red field) for both Hard Disks in my NexStar 3 MX (Model: NST-360MX-SR). The documentation said that for this error I needed to remove the mismatched drives and insert correct ones.
Since the unit was brand new, I assumed (incorrectly) that the drives were not compatible with the unit on account of the serial numbers, and was nearly ready to go and purchase different drives. That’s when I found this thread. After installing the SteelVine application, and looking at its report, I saw that one of the details is the “Exp. S/N” of the drives. I wasn’t sure if this meant “Expiration” or what, but finally realized that it must mean “Expected.” Of course, I did not have two drives with those serial numbers! I realized, at this point, that the unit was not new, but must have been a returned product.
The firmware was already the updatest, latest and greatest, so I could not attempt solving my problem by upgrading it. I followed the advice here of resetting the unit while it was powered on and the drives were out several times, to no avail. True, the LED lights would stop flashing a few second after releasing the reset button, but there would be no apparent change in the status. I could not format the disks which I had, and the only thing showing up in the Disk Utility was an 8 GB of space (should have been 2 TB) that can only have represented the ROM on the unit. Of course, I would get a “resource busy” error if I tried to partition that.
Finally, I decided that I would reset the unit while the drives were still attached and the unit was connected to the computer. Always before I had reset it while disconnected from the computer, as I did not know what that might do (computers don’t generally like USB connects/disconnects without telling them what’s going on).
It worked! So, I think I should add that, in my case at least, being powered on was not sufficient. It needed to be connected to the drives and/or the computer at the same time!
Hope this helps someone.
Correct. You need to install the drives in the housing, attach the eSATA or USB cable to the machine and then press the switch.
Great stuff, would probably have taken me days to work this out! Seems you have to reboot when you do anything with esata which I’m using but working great so far.
I just purchased the Nextstar MX (NST-400MX-SR). I have a backup Western Digital SATA 1TB drive formatted in NTFS that I previously had in an external USB housing. I bought an second Western Digital 1TB drive to be used in a RAID 1 configuration with the one I used as a backup drive. I want to put both of them into the Nextstar MX and mirror the new drive to have the identical data that exists on the old drive. I notice that the jumper switches were set with the first 3 to “on” and the 4th to “off”. That is not a configuration listed in the manual, so I set the switches to the RAID 1 configuration (1 & 2 “off” and 3 & 4 “on”) and pushed the reset button (I now know I should have the unit powered and connected to the computer thanks to this blog). I only want to format the new drive and keep the data on the old drive (mirrored to the new drive).
I have some questions:
1. Why were the first 3 switches set to “on” and the 4th set to “off” when I got the unit?
2. I see both of the drives in the disk management procedure under Windows Vista. It has a selection for formatting using GPT (disks larger than 2 TB). Should I select that?
3. Should I select MBR-master boot record. It is the default selection.
4. Can I be in RAID 1 during the formatting process of formatting the new drive?
5. I assume that once formatted, the NexStar MX will automatically mirror all the data on the old drive to the new drive, correct?
6. Is there anything else I should be aware of?
Hi Eric
I don’t have all the answers to your questions, but I’ll try my best
1) Might be a special test mode they use in the factory (is my best guess). Probably not something to lose sleep over.
2) If you are seeing the two individual drives in disk management then they are not in RAID. You probably don’t need to set GPT.
3) Probably not required as you won’t be booting from theses drives
4&5) I would strongly suggest you backup your data to another machine and start fresh with both drives. One of the other comments suggested this does work, but I would not attempt it without a backup.
6) I suggest you backup the data from the existing drive, install both drives on the unit and press the reset button while powered on. You should then be presented with one drive in device manager which you can then format.
I rarely reply to blogs etc, but I just had to write a big thank you. I was experiencing exactly the problems you just solved for me. The Steelvine Manager is a godsend, thank you so much for posting this.
Glad I could help out
Thank you, thank you, thank you for posting this tip. Based on feedback at newegg.com I caught just a hint that there was something not documented in the Vantec NexStar MX user’s guide regarding RAID configuration but I couldn’t figure it out. Wow! Your post really saved me a lot of time.
I knew something was amiss when both drives were being reported natively in my onboard SATA RAID/ACHI controller status manager (AMD RaidXpert). I knew that wasn’t right and that if the NexStar MX was really in RAID mode, it should not be asserting the fact that there were two Hitachi drives present. It did so because the enclosure’s factory default dip switch setting is for two, independent disks, so the enclosure is just passing thru the drive info in that mode. Now that it is in RAID 1 mode, the drive type and model are being emulated by the enclosure and, from the viewpoint of my onboard SATA controller, the drive model is merely stated to be ‘External Disk’ which makes a lot more sense.
For anyone interested, I can confirm that the Steelvine Configuration Manager software for Vista 64 is compatible with Windows 7 x64 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Definitely worth installing if for no other reason than to confirm a Raid 1 configuration is in effect (which the application refers to as SAFE mode.)
The Steelvine site also has newer firmware for the drive controllers which you can flash via the Configuration Manager application. I haven’t tested that because the controller is busy mirroring HDD1 to HDD2 and I don’t want to disturb it, so I can’t say what features might hinge on the newer firmware or whether it’s worth the trouble to update.
I’m so much happier now. With the configuration monitor/manager I feel like I’ve got something much more in line with what you’d expect from an add-on disc controller…. a complete solution.
And thanks to Google for putting your Blog post in the top ten search results.
What a relief.
Hi, my name is Reinhard, live in Germany. Hope my English is good enough. Thanks a lot for the hint with the reset button! Finally the harddrive shows up in my computer. I am rather new to this kind of stuff. May I place questions please? I opened the cabinet of the NexStar MX (bought it with two Hitachi 1TB drives built in) to set the switches to Raid1. What I could see was a third switch. The manual doesn’t say anything about a third switch. Does anybody know about the intention of this switch on top of the two switches you need to set for Raid 1 mode? There is a mention in the so called manual about an “Adjusting Key”. Heaven knows what this should be? Does anybody know about? I formatted the drive, and now HDD2 is continously flashing, while HDD1 shows a continuos light. Why this continuos flashing? If you would like to reply please don’t write too complicated, as my English is far from perfect. Thanks for helping. I’ve taken a closeup photo of this switch array and could send it to anyone for a comment what he’d think.
yeah i was having a whole lot of trouble with e 360MX. i agree e manual sucks. glad i found e ‘reset’ solution thru this thread. but now i have another question which i hope u peeps are able to help.
I have set to raid 1, manage to see both hdd lights solid state and able to see my 1TB hdd. but after i change e volume label on it, now hdd1 light is in solid state and hdd2 is flashing for e last 30mins. I have not even transferred any data in? can anyone tell me what is going on? would really appreciate e advise. Thanks in advance
@Reinhard: If your RAID setup is working I would ignore the additional switches. If the one drive is flashing the RAID volume could be offline. Install SteelVine and check the status.
@Axel: If the one drive is flashing the RAID volume could be offline. Install SteelVine and check the status.
I got mail from Vantec! Please read what they say about the mysterious third switch on the board inside the cabinet, perhaps somebody wants to know too:
“Dear Valued Customer,
The switch is not in use and it is only for softwre RAID mode.
If you have any further question, please don’t hesitate to ask and we will
do our best to answer them.
Regards,
Technical Support
Vantec Thermal Technologies
Tel: 510-668-0368
Fax: 510-668-0367
http://www.vantecusa.com“
FYI: The SteelVine firmware update won’t install, the message is it is incompatible.
I have 2 of these NexStars, one purchased a year ago, one purchased a week ago. The SteelVine Manager reports different firmware versions in each, the most recent NexStar has a firmware version even newer than the one posted on the Silicon Image site.
The new NexStar works perfectly no matter what eSATA port I plug it into in my rig: a PCI-E card based on the Sil3132 chipset, the Intel ICH10R chipset, or the JMICRON JMB36X chipset. The old NexStar box only works properly if plugged into the JMICRON eSATA port. If I plug it into any other port, it is either not recognized at all, or it causes my machine to become sluggish and freeze while it logs hundreds of drive and controller errors and timeouts in the system event log.
I am glad I found this blog. I was going balistic with the installation of a Raid 1 with the Nexstar MX and wasn’t sure what was going on until I read this blog about the reset button. Seems to be working now, but the SteelVineManager is showing a “purple” color for one of the drives (Drive’0′). The Steelvine manual indicates that the color means the drive is in the wrong slot. I have 2 brand new drives, so they should both be OK. I am new with Raid and just wanted to make sure - do I ignore this or should I stop the rebuilding and swap the location of the drives?
Thanks.
There are only two slots and it makes no difference if you are installing two drives, so the slot warning is incorrect. Considering that your drives are rebuilding it’s more likely that the purple colour indicates a rebuild. I would wait for the rebuild to complete and check the status in SteelVine again.
It completed the rebuild overnight - so I think. But its rebuilding again ! Does it rebuild every time I turn the enclosure on ? I don’t plan on leaving it running all the time. I’ll let it complete the rebuild again, and leave the system running - just to see what happens. During system boot, the Jmicron finds the 1st drive and reports the size, but also says “non-Raid”. In the bios, I checked the reported drives and it has one drive reported as “raid”. Is the Jmicron reporting a “non raid” drive because the raid engine is in the enclosure ?
Thanks.
The rebuilding was done overnight. This morning the two drive had blinking blue lights on the enclosure. After a reboot of my system, the Raid went into a rebuild again ! Its about halfway done now. But how often does it need to go into a rebuild ? Is it supposed to be rebuilding all the time ? I am using Jmicron on my ASUS motherboard. During post, the JMicron finds the enclosure, but reports just one drive and says - ‘non-Raid’. Is this because the raid is built-in with the enclosure ?
Thanks.
@Malam. I assume the drive is attached via eSATA? Have you tried disconnecting the enclosure from the eSATA port before rebooting? It might be that which is causing the rebuild. Your motherboard is not going to be able to detect RAID that has been setup on the enclosure for obvious reasons.
Good News !
Attribute my problems to “operator error”. The unit works fine, the Raid 1 set-up is ok. Here is what I think happened. When the system went into a “rebuild’ mode, I expected the rebuilding to be as fast as disk copying. Each time I interefered with the disk, the rebuilding gets reset. Eventually, I left the unit alone. The rebuilding phase was completed, but the lights on the enclosure were still “on” indicating disk activity. This morning, I left the unit alone and fired up SteelVine Manager to check the status. It indicated that the rebuild was completed successfully, but needed to “Verify”. So, again, I left the unit alone to complete the verification. SteelVine now indicates both volumes are ok. You are correct the purple color indicated the system rebuilding process and both drives now have the color purple to indicate SAFE mode. Just to check, I copied a small file to the main drive and saw the second drive’s activity light went on to mirror the copy too.
I expected the e-SATA port on my ASUS P5Q motherboard which has ICH10R chipset to be compatible, but for some reason, it was not. Intel claims that this chipset supports port multiplication function. Maybe, I need to install the chipset driver? I am using the JMicron e-SATA Port and is working fine.
Thanks for your help - it is appreciated.
@Malam Glad you got things working and thanks for the feedback!