We have been looking for an external hard drive case to match our Mac mini and couldn't pass up a $69 special from OWC on a bare NewerTech miniStack. We already had a super-quiet and very fast 80GB 7200 RPM Seagate Barracuda IV hard drive to go in it. Along with its good looks, the miniStack has built-in hubs for 3 FireWire 400 ports and 4 USB 2.0 ports so $69 is a real bargain.

Our miniStack arrived quickly with OWC's inexpensive UPS 2nd Day Air shipping option ($7.95). In the box were the silver miniStack bottom, a white cover, a small power brick and cord, a 12" FireWire cable, a 12" USB 2.0 cable and an owner's manual and assembly guide. The minStack is all plastic so its silver color is similar but not identical to the aluminum Mac mini. Our only gripe, and a small one at that, is the FireWire and USB cables could have been much shorter and the thinner variety for a neater appearance when assembled.

Our Seagate hard drive was a very tight fit but fit it did. With a drive installed, the miniStack is a very compact package. Unfortunately, our drive distorted the miniStack slightly so the white top didn't snap on perfectly.

Cooling is partially obtained via a heat sink, the aluminum carriage that holds the drive. The fins of the heat sink extend out of the bottom of the case. The miniStack also has a small fan (upper right in photo at left) to help with cooling. The miniStack's fan can be set at a constant low, constant high or automatic speed. The default setting is automatic and that is where we left it. A heat sensor turns on the fan when needed and runs it at low or high as needed. One can see the heat sensor taped to the center of the Seagate hard drive.

The miniStack has Oxford 911 FireWire 400 and Prolific 2507 USB 2.0 bridges. It can be set to automatically use either FireWire or USB 2.0 to communicate with the Mac mini or it can be forced to use FireWire only. The recommendation is forced FireWire and that is where we set it. When connected to a Mac mini, the miniStack has two FireWire 400 (one more) and three USB 2.0 (two more) ports available for connecting additional peripherals.

The miniStack has a power switch but generally it is not needed. It powers up and down with the Mac mini so there's no need to ever turn the miniStack off.

We have used the miniStack for several days now. It is a bit more finnicky to move around among computers that any other external FireWire drive that we've used. We occasionally had to shut it and the computer off and disconnect them and then turn them both on and connect them again to get it to work correctly. But this was a minor nuisance and did not reappear once it was working right and left connected and powered up and down only via the computer.

Our Mac mini is used as a multi-media center attached to our large screen TV and home theater sound system. We use Apple's Front Row 1.0.1 hacked to work with the free Front Row Enabler and a Bluetooth keyboard to select among movie, song and image files from our collection on the larger external drive. Adding the larger external drive adds disk space for holding more files. We can easily increase it to 500GB if needed. The external 7200 RPM 80GB drive is also faster than the stock 4200 RPM 40GB internal drive.

So how fast is it? We tested the Mac mini stock internal drive against the external miniStack drive using two of our standard tests, Xbench Disk and duplicate a 700MB folder of 3600 files. Here are the results:

The external drive is much faster as expected.

What about noise? The miniStack's fan comes on during heavy work like the folder duplication test but it is not obtrusive. It is very much like a PowerBook fan, a rush of air but no annoying whine.

We like the miniStack by NewerTech. It looks very good in the company of a Mac mini and it adds two USB 2.0 ports and a FireWire 400 port to the stock configuration. The miniStack has a fan like the Mac mini and, like the Mac mini, when the fan kicks in it's not annoying. Our complaints are minor: cables too long, color slightly off, fit not perfect and the connection flaky the first time. But the miniStack looks better on the desk than our former favorite, the OWC Elite, and at $69 (still) it is inexpensive. [Bill Fox]