Customer Reviews

Toshiba Canvio 500 GB USB 3.0 Basics Portable Hard Drive - HDTB105XK3AA (Black)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This USB is very convenient to use. Just connect to PC with the cable that comes with it and use it! It's very quick, I backed up my entire hard drive in ~ 30 min. The USB is very small and thin and can be carried in a purse, if needed. I'm very satisfied with my purchase and the price is just right!

I bought this drive because it was cheap. It's the definition of "you get what you pay for." I plugged it in to my Windows 7 laptop and it opened for a few seconds. Then Windows said that the device has malfunctioned and it would not turn on again. I exchanged it for another one and the second one worked OK. It could handle about 20 GB worth of data in 1 stream until it shut off. This is OK if you're just transferring some files between PC's, but it could not be used for a full-system backup.

If you're transferring files between PC's or not using the drive that much it's OK for the price, but you're better off spending another 10-20 bucks on something that is actually worthwhile.

I got this as another backup drive for my various computers: MacBookPro, MacBookAir, 2 Toshiba laptops. This drive works fine with my 1 yo MacBookPro with the Snow Leopard operating system. However the newer MacBookAir with the Lion OS will not recognize it. I googled and found on the Mac support site that many people have had this problem with this drive.

Curiously, I have an older Toshiba Canvio that works just fine with the newer Lion OS. That's why I ordered another one, I assumed it would work effortlessly with all my computers. NOT!

Since I can still use it with my other computers, I'm keeping it. But I'm not enthusiastic about it. From the opinions I read on the Mac support site, it's not clear whether the "fault" is with Apple or with Toshiba.

I had bought this and a 1tb by toshiba. Both died within a few days, not sure why. Thought it was a good deal till that happened

So far this drive is doing a good job as a back up device. I have admit that it looks cheap. But as long as it works I don't really care.

I have been putting off backing up my computer because I thought I would never need too. Stupid...for some unknown reason I was missing a bunch of photos and music. So I went to Amazon and picked this portable hard drive because of the reviews. I am so glad I did. It is a piece of cake. No hassles, manuals etc...just plug in.

This Toshiba portable drive is not for someone who needs step-by-step instructions. The box contained a "Quick Install Guide," that provided NO instructions for use, only a graphic that showed, basically where to install the USB cable. For me, it should have shown which end was "up!" When I inserted the cable into the computer, the installation process began but nothing popped up to show when the process was finished, and no icon to click. I need something that says, "BACKUP" on the link. When I found the drive on my computer and opened it, there was no "backup" selection and none of the other options seemed appropriate. Then Windows popped up and questioned "compatability" so I clicked the Windows Vista defauolt selection hoping it would unlock the mystery of the backup option. In the end, I repacked the drive in its box, uninstalled the software and will return it tomorrow. I did try to call Toshiba but they are almost clueless and referred me to a website (tinyurl.com) that also proved to be a dead end. In my opinion, this should be an easier process, like Roxio's burn software...."three clicks and done"! For those who said that using this drive was easy, you know something that I don't and that knowledge is what Toshiba SHOULD have included in the instructions! I also own a Maxtor-One Touch that was easier to use with my old XP OS but it also did not include specific instructions. When I switched to Vista, the Maxtor did not operate, so I decided to switch to the $79. Toshiba. Big mistake. Next I'm going to scour the blogs to find a drive that comes with "how to" instructions. Also, from reading these reviews, I'm going to opt for more storage.