Toshiba Canvio Basics 2TB Portable Hard Drive - Black (HDTB320XK3CA)

£9.9
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Toshiba Canvio Basics 2TB Portable Hard Drive - Black (HDTB320XK3CA)

Toshiba Canvio Basics 2TB Portable Hard Drive - Black (HDTB320XK3CA)

RRP: £99
Price: £9.9
£9.9 FREE Shipping

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Description

Reformatting it for Mac use only takes a minute or so using OS X’s Disk Utility, but this point is worth considering for those buying for someone with limited tech chops. Toshiba makes a version of its Premium model pre-formatted for Mac use. The Toshiba Canvio Advance comes ready to plug into a Windows computer. That means it’s formatted to the NTFS file system, which makes the drive read-only if used with a Mac. The main difference between the two Toshiba drives – other than the price and the design – boils down to the bundled applications.

Despite costing more to build, external drives sell for cheaper because manufacturers such as Toshiba and Seagate are ready to sacrifice margins for sales volume.

However, it does offer decent performance for a 5400rpm 2.5in spinning platter hard drive. When transferring large files it writes at 122MB/s. Transferring 10GB of data will take around a minute and a half. Toshiba is so confident of the drive’s low-noise, low vibration operation there are no rubber feet on the bottom, just plain plastic. At one point during testing the drive did cause a buzzing noise, but this was only because it wasn’t properly seated. Unlike an SSD, spinning platter hard drives should really be used flat and not be moved about as they are whirring away. We’d love to have seen Toshiba use a USB Type-C connector here, but every cent counts at the lower-end of the market. That compares poorly with the Samsung SpinPoint M9T drive, released this year that has a higher platter density (three 667GB platters), four times the cache size (32MB) and is way thinner (9.5mm versus 15mm). As a side note, not surprisingly, Toshiba's bare drive costs about 25% more than its external version. Verdict Hard drives may be relatively slow, but they still have their place. And unlike old hard drives, the Toshiba Canvio Advance’s read/write noise is barely noticeable, particularly if there’s a laptop/desktop/console fan whirring away nearby.

As with a lot of portable drives, the Toshiba Canvio Advance’s cable isn’t that long either. It measures around 45cm from the end of one terminal to another. There’s limited scope to hide this drive. And as it uses an old-style microUSB 3.0 port on the drive itself, it’s unlikely many will have a suitable spare lying around. If you are in the market for an affordable, large capacity portable external hard drive with a long warranty and a Type-C connector (useful for connecting to a smartphone or tablet), the Canvio Flex fits the bill. It is keenly priced, reasonably built and performs as expected. Our only slight concern is the fact that it uses a Micro-B USB port for which there is no real need.

A big little HDD

The cable ends in a standard USB port —bear this in mind if you have a new laptop that only has USB-C connectors. Software and compatibility



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