HDD Toshiba Canvio Basics 2 TB: an old horse is better than a new horse

Packaging and equipment

The Toshiba Canvio Premium box turned out to be as miniature as the drive itself. And through the plastic window you can admire the hard drive itself before purchasing.

The delivery set contains everything you need. In addition to the required pieces of paper, it included a fabric case, a USB 3.0 cable, and an adapter from USB Type A to USB Type C.

The compact adapter can be useful not only for Toshiba Canvio Premium. With its help, you can connect any other peripherals and storage devices to modern MacBooks.

Testing Toshiba Canvio Premium 2Tb

To begin with, I decided to run the popular CrystalDiskMark test. I was very pleased with the results; the hard drive produced almost 150 MB per second for reading/writing. I understand that many today are accustomed to SSD speeds, but let's remember that for a hard drive, this is a very cool indicator. Many, even 3.5 hard drives, hardly exceed the 100 MB threshold.

As for the actual usage scenario, I created a folder, stuffed 6 GB of completely different files into it, and sent it to be copied to a Toshiba Canvio Premium 2Tb. I was surprised, but the entire package was copied in 45 seconds, and the speed did not drop below 135 even on a bunch of small files. This confirms that the drive is running at high speed, and this speed is stable in all conditions.

Then I wondered if the speed would drop when using an adapter to Type-C. But the speed did not drop, and this means that Toshiba did not save money and use a cheap Chinese adapter. The included adapter does not reduce the speed of operation.

Appearance

The design of Canvio Premium echoes Apple laptops. The drive has a nice metal body, and its shade is very similar to silver MacBooks.

On the top panel of Toshiba Canvio Premium there is only the manufacturer's logo and a blue LED.

On the plastic back of the hard drive there is a sticker with basic information and four rubber feet.

Toshiba Canvio Premium has only one connector and it is located on the side. This is a regular MicroUSB 3.0, which is found in all external hard drives with USB 3.0.

Tests

When the drive is connected to the USB2.0 port, the LED indicator lights up white

If the port supports USB3.0, then blue

After connection, 931GB of free space out of 931GB is indicated:

The disk is already initially formatted in NTFS

Information from Crystal Disk Info

In USB2.0 connection mode, the speed of copying a file from an external HDD and back is 30Mb/s and 25Mb/s, respectively

In USB3.0 mode - 105Mb/s and 83Mb/s, respectively

Later, I divided it into two disks, “splitting off” 5GB from the total space for the future, for copying the unpacked Windows distribution into this partition for subsequent reinstallation. There were no problems with this procedure.

Data from SSD-Z

ATTO Disk Benchmark: ~118 MB/s

Information from Crystal Disk Mark in USB2.0 and USB3.0 mode

Tests were carried out on an old Toshiba Sattelite C850 laptop, the performance was normal, but 10% lower than in other reviews.

Software

As befits any modern external hard drive, Toshiba Canvio Premium comes with several programs that are designed exclusively for the MacOS operating system. The first utility, HDD Password Tool, will be able to password-protect the entire hard drive, and you can only access it by typing the password. Judging by the fact that after setting a password, the disk does not begin the procedure of encrypting its entire space, the HDD Password function is used here, which is available on every hard drive and works on all OSes and even in the BIOS. But in practice it is used so rarely that most users are not even aware of such possibilities.

Next, according to the manufacturer’s website, the NTI Backup Now EZ utility, designed for creating backups, should be stored on the hard drive. In our case, another utility was discovered on the Toshiba Canvio Premium, with a very dissonant name for Macs: Pogoplug PC.

By default, the utility will require you to pay for a subscription or offer a 30-day trial. Fortunately, a regular 1-year subscription is already available for all Toshiba Canvio Premium owners. Pogoplug PC will immediately warn you about this and switch to the paid version.

Pogoplug PC itself is nothing more than an ordinary cloud for storing files. In the program interface, you can specify the folders that will be used for synchronization. You can also access your files through the web interface.

conclusions

The drive is quite suitable for storing and occasionally reading data.
I appreciate that the SATA-microUSB adapter turned out to be removable, which means that use cases such as using this hard drive in a laptop, docking stations, or replacing it with another one, without soldering, open up. The connector is soldered standing to the board, i.e. across - here you should be careful and careful when connecting and disconnecting the cord. The use of microUSB itself is a controversial decision; on the one hand, it is a fairly common connector and any microUSB cable can easily fit it. On the other hand, this connector is less robust than the good old miniUSB. The speed is at the same level, although in other tests I have seen it higher. Perhaps it's all in the configuration of my laptop. As for the place of purchase, now you don’t have to wait 3 weeks, immediately pay an additional $2, buy offline and get a local guarantee, but it is unknown which adapter is used inside - soldered or removable.

Advantages

— Availability of USB3.0 — Maintainability — Possibility of replacing or installing an HDD in a laptop — Rubberized feet to prevent slipping on the table

Flaws

— The connector requires care, because it is not soldered securely — A case included in the package would have been nice

Testing

To test Toshiba Canvio Premium, we used CrystalDiskMark version 5.2.1, ATTO Disk Benchmark 3.0.5, HD Tune 2.55, HDD Scan 3 and CrystalDiskInfo 7.0.5 utilities. For tests, the drive was formatted in the NTFS file system and connected to a Windows PC.

Judging by the CrystalDiskInfo and HDD Scan reports, a Toshiba MQ01UBD100 hard drive was installed inside the Toshiba Canvio Premium. This is in some way a unique Toshiba drive, the controller of which does not have a SATA III connector - instead it has a MicroUSB 3.0 port. Thus, it was possible to reduce the length of the drive by getting rid of the additional SATA-USB 3.0 adapter, which is found in almost all external hard drives.

The USB 3.0 interface has enough bandwidth for regular hard drives. In addition, SATA - USB 3.0 controllers have been working without brakes and glitches for a long time, so the results of testing external hard drives are more or less the same. In the case of the Toshiba Canvio Premium, we see the same picture as other hard drives with a spindle speed of 5400 rpm.

HDD Toshiba Canvio Basics 2 TB: an old horse is better than a new horse

Content

• Main technical characteristics
• Packaging and delivery
• Appearance
• Testing the device Advantages
• Flaws

The issue of storing and transferring large volumes of information periodically arises for almost any user. In most cases, a Flash or SSD drive is sufficient, but the capacity of this drive may not always be sufficient, and the cost of large-capacity drives is high; in general, no one has canceled the good old HDD drives. Today I’ll tell you about one of these drives, Toshiba Canvio Basics 2TB.

Main technical characteristics

Packaging and delivery

The hard drive is supplied in a fairly soft light green cardboard box, on the front surface of which is an image of the device and minimal technical specifications.

On the back of the box and along the sides there is minimal information about the compatibility of the device and information about the manufacturer.

Inside the box, in a plastic bag, is the hard drive itself.

The package included:

1. Toshiba Canvio Basics 2TB;
2. Adapter for connecting to a computer;
3. Documentation.

There is nothing extra in the kit.

Appearance

The Toshiba Canvio Basics 2TB hard drive is a classic parallelepiped with rounded edges. The body is made of matte black plastic. On the top cover there is a company logo, applied by milling, and there is also an LED indicator for device activity.

On the reverse side there is a sticker with the company logo.

The side ends are empty.

Only at one end is there a port for connecting a USB cable.

The length of the supplied cable is 45 cm and fits well into the connector.

Device testing

The device was tested in a number of traditional tests. The first of these is the SSD-Z application. This utility is capable of displaying a number of device characteristics, as well as performing a drive speed test. The main screen displays the following information:

• Device name;
• Firmware version;
• Device serial number;
• SSD series startup time and TRIM command performance;
• Supported technologies;
• Transfer interface;
• And other information...

The benchmark tab contains information about the device testing results.

The next test, CrystalDiskMark (64bit) 6.0.1, is a synthetic benchmark that allows you to test the drive in the mode of a well-compressible stream of the same type of data, and a stream of random data that is practically uncompressible, due to which the final results should be close to the maximum possible indicators for the test subject drive.

AS SSD Benchmark 1.7.4739.38088

This benchmark helps determine the speed of operations with files within one media, but you should remember that the test may depend on the amount of RAM in the system.

• — Seq — sequential read/write test
• — 4K — test for random read/write blocks 4
• - 4K (QD32) - test for random reading/writing of 4 KB blocks (queue depth - 64)
• — Acc.time – access time

ATTO Disk Benchmark is a utility for testing the performance of storage devices; it tests storage media by calculating the speed of writing and reading data on blocks of different sizes - from 512B to 64MB. At the end of testing, the user receives a graphical picture of the speed of reading and writing data, based on which one can judge the performance of the disk.

CrystalDiskInfo allows you to monitor the status of a hard drive that supports SMART technology. It monitors and gives an overall assessment of the “health” of the drive.

Advantages

• Price;
• USB 3.0 interface support;
• Dimensions and weight of the device;
• Possibility of operation from a regular micro USB cable;
• Build quality;
• Data transfer rate;
• HDD activity indicator;
• Well balanced;
• Quiet.

Flaws

• Lack of a transport case included in the delivery set;
• Lack of impact protection.

Conclusion

Toshiba Canvio Basics 2TB is a budget and very high-quality external drive from a well-known brand with support for a USB 3.0 controller. The quiet operation of this device allows it to be used for recording torrents at night, even in a living room; the compact dimensions of the case ensure easy transportation. Toshiba Canvio Basics 2TB fits quite comfortably into a jeans pocket. High read/write speeds make this device stand out in terms of price/quality ratio. Overall, the updated version of the Toshiba Canvio Basics line of external drives leaves only positive impressions.

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