Toshiba Canvio 500 GB USB 3.0 Basics Portable Hard Drive – HDTB105XK3AA (Black)
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- USB 3.0-powered portable add-on storage.
- Easy to use with no software to install.
- Protects your drive (Internal Shock Sensor and Ramp Loading Technology).
- Gives you peace of mind (Toshiba 3-Year Limited Warranty).
- Plug and play operation.
- Backwards compatible with USB 2.0.
Canvio Basics 3.0 products have been designed and manufactured in accordance with Toshiba’s high quality product standards, incorporating the latest technology and user-interface, while ensuring best-in-class performance, quality and workmanship. With Toshiba’s Canvio Basics 3.0 Portable Hard Drives, you’ll enjoy portable storage space for even the largest digital libraries. Our 500GB Drive is capable of storing up to: 142,000 digital photos, or 131,000 digital music files, or 410 downloaded digital movies. Each Canvio Basics 3.0 Portable Hard Drive includes an internal shock sensor and ramp loading technology to help keep your drive safe. Storage for your computer made simple. Future proof with USB 3.0 interface and backwards compatible with USB 2.0, Toshiba’s Canvio Basics 3.0 Portable Hard Drives are an ideal portable add-on storage expansion solution that makes your storage easy and simple. Extremely portable with a compact design, the sleek looking and post card sized Canvio Basic
Toshiba Hard Drive
Toshiba Canvio 500 GB USB 3.0 Basics Portable Hard Drive – HDTB105XK3AA (Black)
List Price: $ 79.99
Price:
Saved my bacon! UPDATE: FAILED @ 16 DAYS,
UPDATE: Got this drive December 6th and as of December 22nd it is dead. My review below is still sound advice. Sound advice which I failed to heed 100% and I lost a week’s worth of valuable stuff because I didn’t have enough layers of backup. Oy vey. I’m demoting this drive to 1-star from 5 because, solid warranty aside, this is clearly a very poor drive. DO NOT BUY. Forget USB 3.0, bring back the old USB 2.0 Toshiba Canvio that actually worked! I should have trusted the reviews but I was desperate. If only it had lasted 3 more days…
ORIGINAL REVIEW:
I’m traveling and my client’s ol’ iMac hard drive decided to go out to pasture.
I had the novel idea of ordering one of these Toshibas, having her hook it up to her computer, then use the Seagate backup drive I had for her to essentially restore her system onto the Toshiba! This way she could have a fully functioning machine while she waits for me to come back to town and do a proper hard drive swap.
So this is a weird review in that what I’m saying is: it’s good enough to run your entire Mac off of, over USB, should you find yourself in a similar, unfortunate situation.
Now, caveat: you normally want these hard drives to have better ratings but desperate times called for this purchase. With Thailand having flooded, hard drive prices soared in some instances and drives that I used to get with 3-year warranties, now have 1!
You really need these hard drives to have 3-5 year warranties. They’re either going to die on arrival, in the first 30 days, in the first 4 months, or after a couple years :p Lol I know. 500GB drives are the most I would personally go with in this 2.5″ form factor. 1TB in this size squeezes more platters or density into a smaller size… it’s just too new for my tastes (with 3.5″ drives I’ve been happy up to 2TB but am starting to look at 3TB ratings). The new USB 3.0 feature isn’t necessary for me — I don’t have any clients that can access that speed yet … and, ironically, this new “improvement” makes me the most worried… any time they mess with something that works, you should worry… USB 2.0 works fine! But whatever, since USB 3.0 is about the little board inside this enclosure and not the hard drive, maybe they can’t screw it up so much.
Here’s the deal, anything important to you should be in two places — at least. Main drive and backup. Archive and archive backup…. CD and DVD backups only last like 5 years when you burn them yourself… I mean, they may last longer but sun, temperature, time means they can’t be your primary backup. If it were me, I’d have all my important stuff in 3 places! That way if one hard drive fails, then my stuff is still in two other places. What are the odds of two places going at once? I’ve seen it happen; I’ve had it happen….It’s rare but sometimes you can screw up your backup drive while you’re using it to recover your computer! Oh this wily universe.
So that’s why you do something like have your main stuff on one drive, an active backup drive, and then you have a third drive that’s in your lockbox or firesafe or whatever. It may be healthy to let things get destroyed every so often but that’s not my style… 80 to 160 bones (for two) is cheap data insurance without futzing with or trusting the Cloud to CYA.
Oh, and should your drive die, just go online and find the RMA/warranty process… all these hard drive manufacturers make it fairly straightforward because, honestly, drive failures happen all the time …. 3-5 year warranties mean you get a replacement drive for the price of shipping. So worth it.
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|Initial Review,
I have had the hard drive for a few days now. I was surprised at how small it was when I opened it. I have a 500gb external hard drive that is a few years old and you have to plug it in and its rather large. This one is small, sleek, and fast. Much faster than my old hard drive. I reformatted it to FAT32 so I can use it with my PS3. Works like a charm. I was a little surprised that it didnt have any air holes for venting heat, but I transferred 100gb of data onto it and it was barely warm. I am very excited about it. It is very light which kind of gives it a delicate feel, so I bought a case for it ($8) which I think will definitely increase the lifespan of it.
I will come back with another review if anything goes wrong, but im loving it so far.
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|2 weeks and fail,
This cute little drive seemed fine for 2 weeks. Then sometimes the drive would go to sleep and not wake up until it was unplugged (not nice for Mac or drive). About a week later, the light on the drive started flashing constantly, then it started hanging my Mac. I have a lot of experience with portable drives and have never had one fail so quickly. Also this drive is not supported by Toshiba, so good luck getting it “repaired”. I should have researched more on other sites, because this one has received scathing reviews on Toshiba’s own web site. I usually purchase drives from Amazon, however I needed this drive immediately when I purchased it from Best Buy. Don’t have the box anymore, so I can’t return it and Toshiba doesn’t support it — ugh. Wasted money. Into the trash is goes.
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