Toshiba Canvio Plus 1.0 TB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive E05A100PBU2XK
Posted by admin | Posted in Computer | Posted on 05-10-2010
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- Secures your backup with a password (Data Encryption, up to 256-bit).
- Protects your drive (Internal Shock Sensor and Ramp Loading Technology).
- Gives you peace of mind (Toshiba 3-Year Limited Warranty).
- Our 1TB1 Drive is capable of storing up to: 285,000 digital photos, or 263,000 digital music files, or 820 downloaded digital movies.
- Computer backup made simple. Canvio Portable Hard Drives are preloaded with software to make backup simple.
Product Description
Toshiba Canvio Portable Hard Drive. Canvio 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 Portable Hard Drives, you’ll enjoy portable storage space for even the largest digital libraries. Our 1TB Drive is capable of storing up to: 285,000 digital photos, or 263,000… More >>
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 9.5 mm 1 Tb drive available out there and it can be taken out of the enclosure to replace the drive in unibody aluminum Macbook Pros and following is what I did. Phillips 00 screwdriver, T6 TORX screwdriver and a sharp knife (or long nails) are the tools you need. 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!
STEPS:
1). Format Canvio as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Or partition and format if you are going to use for Windows/Boot Camp too.
2). Make the hard drive bootable by either Installing Mac OS 10.6 and then use Migration Assistant to migrate your settings and software or cloning the drive with Disk Utility. Clean Mac OS install will get rid of the bloatware and make your system a little faster and that is what I did.
3). Extract the formatted Canvio drive out of the enclosure: pry open the top cover using a sharp knife or long nails and twisting at multiple places along the perimeter between the black squared top cover and grey rubber side (search YouTube “open Canvio”- excellent videos). There are three set of plastic latches on the long side and two on short side. The top will pry open easily but then just make sure that you do not damage the rubber shock absorbers, so carefully lift the drive from enclosure.
4). Remove SATA & USB connector from Canvio hard drive.
5). Replace your MacBook Pro drive with the Canvio you just extracted after similarly removing SATA connector from MacBook drive. To extract your MacBook Pro hard drive you are going to need 00 Phillips screwdriver (Wera Kraftform MIcro 2050 PH Electronics Percision Screwdriver, Phillips PH 00 Head) to remove the screw from the plastic retaining bar and T6 TORX screw driver (Wiha 26706 Torx Screwdriver With Precision Handle, T6 x 40mm) to remove four mounting screws from the MacBook hard drive and then screw them on the new Canvio drive. Make sure mounting screws are aligned in their slots and then screw the retaining piece back.
6). Put the battery back, close the MacBook Pro cover.
7). Start the computer back up: you just got yourself a 1 Tb MacBook Pro hard drive. Plus you got yourself a 2.5 inch hard drive enclosure where you can insert the original MacBook drive you just removed. Now you are ready to fill the new drive with more junk!
If it looks difficult, search on YouTube and you will find several separate videos showing all these steps. 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. If you have Mac OS, then Disk Utility is excellent and will let you clone Mac OS or Windows partition or migrate to new drive. Don’t waste your money on paid software.
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. It should work for 9.5 mm and thicker, 2.5 inch SATA drives in Windows notebooks too. 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 although people have said it fits MacBook Pro unibody. I find that hard to swallow because this Toshiba Canvio is (only) 9.5 mm and it barely fits in unibody MacBook Pro. It is a little noisier inside the MacBook.
So with a little bit of ingenuity & trouble, you get least expensive 1 Tb internal drive, either external or internal.
Rating: 4 / 5
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.
Rating: 5 / 5
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?
Rating: 5 / 5
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.
Rating: 5 / 5
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!!
Rating: 5 / 5