Depending on the model you buy, setup may require installing a hard drive. I chose to go this route, as it's not only cheaper, but you can choose whatever hard drive you want to install. I chose a 1TB Western Digital Green hard drive for lower heat output and lower energy use than standard 3.5" hard drives. The hard drive installation is straightforward, taking less than 10 minutes. Afterwards, simply connect it to your Mac via USB and/or Firewire cable, and turn it on.

Potentially the most important feature of this enclosure is its size. NewerTech designed it with the MacMini in mind, and it shows. When placing it under a MacMini the fit is perfect. The only difference is the enclosure is slightly shorter than a MacMini, and the color is different (the sides of the MiniStack are a slightly darker grey than the MacMini). Even with those minor differences, most people think the two devices are one and the same.

The next most important important feature is the number of ports on this enclosure. Most hard drive enclosures contain one to three ports. Those ports are for connecting the device, and nothing else (sometimes there are two Firewire ports for daisy chaining). But the MiniStack has seven ports: four USB 2.0 and three Firewire 400. When you connect the enclosure to your Mac, you are not only getting an external hard drive, but also a USB and/or Firewire hub. Furthermore, the MiniStack is smart enough to determine which interface is faster when you connect both USB and Firewire. This is great for those of us with many USB devices, but zero or few Firewire devices. With that type of setup, you get a USB hub, but a Firewire hard drive.

One downside to the available port configuration is a lack of eSATA and Firewire 800 ports. Both of these are included on the MiniStack v3. The current version of the MacMini doesn't include eSATA ports, but it does include a Firewire 800 port. I wish the v2.5 would have replaced the Firewire 400 with 800 for the extra boost of speed. Of course, as a media center drive, I don't currently need more throughput than the Firewire 400 channel can provide, so I'm safe for now.

Another great aspect of the NewerTech design is the smart power and thermal management. On the power side, when your Mac turns off or goes to sleep, the drive enclosure does as well. This spins down the hard drive, parks the head, and turns off the fan. The front blue light remains on, but the unit is essentially off. On the thermal side, the bottom portion of the installed hard drive has a very large heat sink attached; which is exposed to allow for passive cooling. The small fan will turn on only when the temperature sensor says the drive is too hot. The fan is mostly quiet, except when it gets dusty. I have found that I must blow out the fan with compressed air once a month to keep it running quiet.

All drive options other than the bring-your-own-drive option include a set of hard drive related software products as well. The software bundled include is: Prosoft Engineering Data Backup 3, NovaStor NovaBACKUP, Intech SpeedTools Utilities, and Carbon Copy Cloner. While Apple's Time Machine basically makes the backup software useless for most consumers, the speed tools and drive cloner can be very handy. Carbon Copy Cloner in particular can be used to make a bit-for-bit copy of one hard drive to another.

Finally, I wanted to mention a couple of modifications I have made to the enclosure, and an easily overlooked support point. First, the support point: this enclosure doesn't currently support 10,000 RPM hard drives. This really isn't a big deal for an external enclosure, as none of the ports could really take advantage of a drive of that caliper. As for the modifications, the first one was to block part of the blue light on the front. That light is extremely bright. By using some intelligently placed electrical tape, I have knocked the brightness down to about 25% of the original brightness (and it's still sometimes too bright). The other modification is the addition of some clear plastic feet (can be picked up for a few dollars at any hardware store). I added four feet to the bottom, and four feet to the top for better airflow above and below the enclosure (remember that I have a MacMini sitting on top of the MiniStack). This setup has really helped reduce the frequency of the fan starting up.

The only problem I encountered with this enclosure is the limited use while connected to a TimeCapsule as a network drive. The write speed were unbearably slow (we are talking less than 100 KB/sec). Turns out that the interaction between a Time Capsule or Airport Extreme and multi-interface enclosures is simply not very good. If you are looking to use this enclosure with one of those devices, I suggest going for the USB-only option.

This thing is a perfect fit for the MacMini. Most people I show it to cannot beleive that there is a separate terabyte hard drive under the computer, as it looks like one very compact package. I recommend the MiniStack v2.5 to anyone in the market for an external hard drive enclosure.

Pros	Cons
Perfectly matches a MacMini in size and style Acts as a USB and/or Firewire 400 hub Auto-selects the fastest connection Smart power management Quite operation when fan is clean Kensington security lock slot Supports booting via USB or Firewire port (OS X) Bonus software included in all models except empty enclosure	Doesn't work well when directly connected to Time Capsule or Airport Extreme The front blue light is extremely bright The fan seems to collect dust quickly, and becomes quite loud Doesn't include Firewire 800 or SATA
8.5/10 stars