Like Godfather II, it's better than the original.

Like the first miniStack, the miniStack V2 has three FireWire ports and four USB ports, but Newer Technology took one of each port and relocated it to the side of the drive. Now it's much easier to connect and disconnect peripherals. Nice touch.

Performance of the miniStack V2 is comparable to that of the older miniStack. Using Xbench (free, www.xbench.com) to test for speed, we found that in the Sequential Uncached Write test, both posted speeds of about 36MB per second when we used the FireWire 400 connection. In the Sequential Uncached Read test, the drives both posted speeds of about 37MB per second. Port tweak, yup; performance jump, nope.

The bottom line. The miniStack V2 is a worthy follow-up to a great drive.

COMPANY: Newer Technology
CONTACT: 800-275-4576, www.newertech.com
PRICE: $129 (80GB) to $599.99 (750GB); 320GB tested
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.2 or later
FireWire and USB hub. Connects using FireWire or USB.
Nothing, really.