Customer Reviews

Toshiba Canvio Plus 500 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive E05A050CAU2XK (Raven Black)

5 star:		(262)
4 star:		(89)
3 star:		(29)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(71)

 

 

I've had the previous version of the Toshiba portable hard drives, and this model makes nice improvements. The case is smaller with textured rubber all along the edges. Also, this drives gets recognized faster than the previous Toshiba models, and data transfer seems faster, though I haven't done any concrete tests. The colors are more appealing to me.

The only thing I don't like, which others may or may not agree with, is that the LED light indicating power and activity is much, much brighter than the previous model. The previous model was a small, dimly lit dot, and this model has a larger rectangular LED that's annoying. I won't detract any stars from that because it's very fixable with a small bit of electrical tape.

Overall, this is a very good purchase.

As of June 2010, this Toshiba is the best value for money amongst 1 Tb portable hard drives. The competition includes Western Digital My Passport SE for Mac 1 TB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive WDBABW0010BSL-NESN (Silver) and Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1 TB Ultra-Portable External Hard Drive STAA1000100 (Black) both of which are more expensive than Toshiba Canvio.

Out of the box, it comes as NTFS formatted drive and works only on Windows computers. It even comes with Windows backup software, which I have not used.

For just Mac use, you have to reformat the hard drive as Mac OS Extended (Case Sensitive Journaled). Once reformatted, it works flawlessly as an external drive or Time Machine.

Here is the formatting summary:

FOR WINDOWS ONLY USE - format as NTFS - the format it comes in.
FOR BOTH WINDOWS & MAC USE -format it as MS DOS (FAT 32) but then it does not work as a Time Machine.
TO USE AS MAC ONLY & TIME MACHINE - format as Mac OS Extended (Case Sensitive, Journaled) - which does not work in Windows.
TO USE FOR MAC TIME MACHINE & WINDOWS - partition the drive using Disk Utility and format one partition as Mac OS Extended (Case Sensitive, Journaled) and other partition as NTFS (Windows 7) or FAT 32 (Windows XP)

The drive is big enough that you can partition it and format it anyway and have it all. It is small, sleek, light, quiet and as of June 2010 the biggest capacity portable USB drive. Over the years I have used numerous portable hard drives, most of them Western Digital & Lacie, and they all worked well; only one Fantom hard drive died. This is my first Toshiba hard drive and I have not used this Toshiba Canvio long enough to comment on its longevity but it seems to be functioning well and as of now it is the best value for money.

UPDATE (August 18, 2010): As of now, this is the only 1 Tb 2.5 inch drive available out there and it can be taken out of the enclosure to replace the drive in unibody aluminum Macbook Pros. Phillips 00 screwdriver, T6 TORX screwdriver and a sharp knife (or long nails) are the tools you need. All the steps can be discovered by searching h Google or YouTube for "open Canvio" and "clone Mac hard drive". I followed the instructions and video from owmacsales under sparedrive on their web site and did fresh mac OS install. Macinstruct webs site has detailed descriptions of hard drive cloning and YouTube, several videos uploaded by generous folks. MacBook Pro hard drive is slightly thinner than this Canvio, but it fits snugly and the battery cover can be closed. This is the cheapest way to upgrade MacBook Pro (or notebook) hard drive!

Inside MacBook Pro, I partitioned this drive: one for Mac OS, one for Bootcamp Windows 7 and third as FAT32 where both can read and write. Canvio is a 5400 RPM drive and I am not sure 7200 RPM, 1 Tb is even available in 2.5 inch drives as of now. The only other internal 2.5 inch 1 Tb drive available as of now, Western Digital 1 TB Scorpio Blue SATA 5200 RPM 8 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Notebook Hard Drive WD10TPVT is 5200 RPM and 12.5 mm and people have said it fits MacBook Pro unibody but is more expensive. It is a little noisier inside the MacBook.

UPDATE (10/9/2010): The bigger drive really slows down the Mac OS boot up. On my 320 GB drive the Mac OS boot up time was 1:49 minutes and now on 1 TB drive the Mac OS boot up time is 5:43 minutes! But the drive size does not appear to effect the boot up time for Windows 7, which is 2:17 minutes.

I bought this to have an emergency backup/recovery solution for my daughter's laptop at college.
I selected this particular drive because it was available with a Gold Box discount.

I say "lousy manual" because the only printed material in the box was general stuff about the mechanics of the drive, in about 7 or 8 languages, but no quick start guide or anything to tell someone how to set it up.

So, I plugged it in (just usb, no seperate power plug, which was good), and it immediately proceeded to install backup software without giving any choice. The software was ok, but it installs by default as a service, which is always running to do regular backups. It wasn't what I wanted, so I uninstalled it in favor of a commercial product. I really would have preferred to be allowed to say "no thanks" to the installation.

Once I uninstalled the software, and had the drive set up the way I wanted, it worked fine.

931GB formatted capacity. Fairly fast for and external drive. No auto install backup software. Standard USB cable. Small size. Runs cool. What more could you ask for?

I have received this item in good, faultless packaging. Opened it up, and hooked it on. Started working properly and went on. However, after 3 weeks of seldom usage, it now suddenly stopped working -neither reckognized by the os, nor reaching a constant speed for reading.

Head of the disk reader is setting back to parking position and repositioning to the start up center, randomly over and over again (you can hear the loud enough sound it makes hitting back to parking pos.), and not just getting to read the disk. I have kept the item in perfect condition, with no drops or hits, have used it only on two computers, that have perfect records with peripherials.

I can't believe the situation. It's a Toshiba disk, and it's broke in it's third week !! Amazon has verified that I can get a refund or replacement with no problem.. So I have asked for a return label for refund. However it's too late to ship it overseas, so I am stuck with it. Thanks to toshiba !!

Regarding all the complaints, it is very possible that on this lot of production, Toshiba has a high rate of defect, and one might assume that as a reason for the lowered prices. Although the error has not yet repeated, it is well known that such temporary failures are solid signes of further fatal malfunctions. So now I either have to take the risk of an upcoming data loss or trash the 98$..

If you are willing to buy this product, note that you will possibly be taking a high enough risk of getting one of the defectives out of the production line. So beware.. To remind, Amazon has a 30 day guarantee back.. Beyond that, you will have to deal with toshiba, which seems not to have a good record of customer services according to customer reviews here.

I've read an earlier review on this as to how to format the drive to use with a Mac.
Here's a recap:
1. For use in Windows only, no need to do anything. The drive is already formatted as NTFS. Mac won't read this drive.
2. To use with Mac and Windows. Format as MS DOS Fat 32, but you won't be able to use Time machine.
3. To use with Mac + Time Machine, Format as Mac OS Extended (Case sensitive Journaled). But you can't read this on a Windows system (read on below)
You'll find all these options under Utilities->Disk Utility.

What if you are like me, as in you have both Mac and Windows systems and you want to run Time machine on Mac.?
First use Disk Utility and erase the drive and format as Mac OS Extended. Use the partition tab in Disk Utility. Click on the + symbol on the lower left corner to create a new partition. Configure this as an MS DOS Fat 32 partition. Now you have two partitions on the drive, one for use with Time Machine and the other to share between Mac and Windows (Fat 32). You can configure the relative size of each partitions using the Disk Utility.
If you plug in this drive to a Mac, you'll see both partitions mounted as 2 different drives (you can read/write to both partitions).
If you plug this to a Windows system, you'll only see the Fat 32 partition.

Hope that helps.. enjoy.
Now I'll cross my fingers that this drive doesn't crash multiple times like my old Seagate!!

This is the 3rd removable drive I bougut from Toshiba. I have nothing but praise for all three of them. This is exactly the kind of product I like: no fuss, easy installation, easy to use, reliable. I haven't tried the competition (Western Digital), but I highly recommend the Toshiba.

I buy full seasons of my favorite TV shows frequently, so I quickly ran out of room for my collection on my Macbook Pro's hard drive. 180 gigs of video is quite a bit. I already had a seagate external hard drive which is 1.5 tb, but I hated how I had to plug it into an outlet. So, I bought this--and I love it. You only have one plug to deal with.

It is compact and easy to use. I reformatted it easily for mac-just go to applications, utilities, and then select the disk utility app. Select your external drive on the left, go to the erase tab, and then change it to Mac OS extended
(journaled). Hit erase, go to partitions, and partition as desired. It's really simple in the end.

I transferred all my video files to the external hard drive and erased them from my mac... Voila! Plenty of memory! Now I can use my Seagate primarily for time machine. I split it into 2 partitions and I use one for iTunes back up and the other for time machine-easy as cake.

I completely ADORE this hard drive. I'm the kind of person that needs quite a few externals around... I like to have my stuff backed up, and I have enough data that 1 TB won't even hold what I've got. This was cheap and tiny, so I bought one for a friend and one for myself. I LOVE it.

I have had no problems at all. It works just fine on PC or Mac.

The only thing (and this is a complaint. Just a side note) that I could consider a slight negative of this product (which probably won't even matter to most) is that the drive is very securely in the case. If you wanted to be able to take it out to put it into something else (a laptop, ps3, etc), you would have to break the case to do so.

I would most definitely recommend this. It's an amazing amount of storage on a tiny drive for an amazing price. I know that I am most certainly get me some more of these lovely things...

Love it! It's smaller than my other one of a different brand. I'm a trainer, I keep this portable hard drive in my handbag and can do a training in a moments notice. It holds a wealth of videos, powerpoints and handouts not to mention thousands of photos and it doesn't seem like I can fill it up, I tried. It's so convenient, I bought a second one so I can separate my work material from my personal photo's and video's but I carry both with me. The best investment...