TOSHIBA 1TB Canvio Connect II Portable Hard Drive USB 3.0 Model HDTC810XK3A1 Black

Pros: na

Cons: na

Overall Review: I ordered 2 in febuary 2016 and one just died…..wont stay connected for more than a few minutes. I only use it for time machine backs ups, so it mostly just sits on my desk…. Its DEAD no idea why. The other one is working great… so one good one dead…thats why you always need 2 or more backups, just incase.

Pros: I have several of these units and they have proven reliable. For no nonsense backup storage, they’re hard to beat at the price point (I do wait until they are on sale to buy though).

Cons: Nothing like a show stopper, but the drive rarely transfers near the advertised speed. To be fair it can’t unless all other devices in the stream are faster and not sharing resource with other tasks.

Overall Review: I like it!

Pros: Probably the most important factor in me picking this drive over others was the 2 year warranty. Most 2.5″ external drives only have a 1 year warranty (except for a few expensive Western Digital drives which come with a 3 year warranty). I’ve had the drive for a couple of weeks now and it’s working perfectly, but if I ever do have any issues I won’t hesitate to send it in.

The enclosure feels solid and durable. It is glossy plastic black which will show dust and finger prints, but whatever. The USB 3.0 micro cable plugs in plenty tight. I hate loose ports, so it was nice to see this. I have no doubts about the durability of the enclosure. It does have rubber feet to prevent it from rattling while on a hard surface (it does vibrate just a little, but so does every hard drive ever). The little circle in the corner lights up when the drive is being accessed. The drive powers down after about 10 minutes of inactivity, but will spin up again once it’s needed. Never had any issues with this.

Benchmarks using CrystalDiskMark: USB 3.0 I get 116.4 MB’s read and 114.3 MB/s write. USB 2.0 gives 34.5 MB/s read and 30.04 MB/s write. To completely fill my 2TB drive it would take about 19 hours using USB 2.0 or 5 hours using USB 3.0. For large file transfers you’re definitely going to want to use USB 3.0. No complaints about the speed.

If you want to use this with a Wii U you’ll need a USB y-cable (about $7). The Wii U’s USB ports don’t provide enough power to run it off just one, but with that cable it works fine. I decided not to use this drive for my Wii U, but I can confirm that it does work once you get the cable.

Cons: Only complaint is the USB 3.0 cable, which is only about 18 inches long. I’d prefer a 3 foot cable, but it isn’t too hard to go buy one for a few bucks if I really want it.

Overall Review: Included software is loaded on the drive. Mac Driver, NTI Backup Now EZ 4, and PogoPlug PC for Windows and Mac (how to use your 10GB of cloud storage). I have no need for any of these, but others may.

Pros: The drive does function; hence, the two stars

Cons: The product is described as including “Secure your backups with password protection.” Toshiba itself makes the same claim on its website. While I have purchased other Toshiba external drives that included password protection software, it was not included in the Canvivo Connect II that I received. I wrote Toshiba support about the problem, they responded by saying: ” . . . Unfortunately the Canvio Connect II does not have the password protection feature. My sincere apologies for the inconvenience.” Just for kicks I wrote back to Toshiba and pointed out that their own product description states the drive offers: “Secure your backups with password-protected data encryption.” See, http://storage.toshiba.com/consumer-hdd/external/canvio-connect-ii I suppose their lawyers may argue the description doesn’t actually state that such software is included, just that such software, if the consumer obtains it somewhere else, may function on the drive. I still think that since such software was included by Toshiba in the past on their other external drives, that such a description is a bit misleading to the consumer (at the least a repeat customer such as myself). Oh well, lesson learned (buyer beware).

Overall Review: If you would be satisfied with a functioning drive which does include some sort of automatic backup software, then buy it. Just don’t expect to be able to lock your drive if you travel with it. That software is not included.

Pros: ~120 MB/s read/write on my Z170 USB 3.0 ports.
Native USB 3.0 interface.
Spins up in ~7 seconds.
Comes with a software suite that includes a NTFS for OS X driver.

Was on sale for under $100

Cons: Native USB interface means you cannot pull this drive from it’s enclosure and use it with anything that has a SATA connection. 🙁

Not a high precision drive IMO, my example has a quite noticeable vibration while spinning.

Overall Review: Contains a MQ03UBB300 15mm height drive.

Pros: Very pretty, conveniently small. Worked like a charm, after some techie command line voodoo.

Cons: When I went to format the partition, DiskUtility kept spitting back errors. Eventually found a post on r/applehelp that showed how to zero out the MBR from the command line.

Pros: Have purchased many of these.. I install them for customers and leave without any issues or unexpected curves.They are quit and unobtrusive and and worth their weight in gold when it comes time to do a restore of data or the hard drive. The NTI backup itself is worth the price. These are great devices especially when on sale.

Cons: None.

Pros: 2 TB exteral for a decent price
works pretty fast for an average person just looking to copy backups within a reasonable amount of time. pre formatted to NTFS so if you are using windows you’re golden out of the box.

Cons: none so far. its about the size of the old blackberries. maybe slightly thicker. but light.

Overall Review: first thing i did was copy the contents of a backup WD SSHD in my desktop. was 493GB, 33,000+ files 2,800+ folders. Using ASUS M5A99X Evo (old enough to see the beginnings of USB 3.0 Tech) and the provided USB 3.0 Turbo Boost feature I copied the entire contents of that backup to the Toshiba in about 2 hours. give or take 15 minutes. I was not sitting right there watching it was periodically checking on it. so file transfers at least at an idle with older USB 3.0 tech are pretty decent. I would recommend this.