REVIEWS / EXTERNAL DRIVES / TOSHIBA INDIA PVT LTD (PC DIVISION)

Toshiba Canvio 1 TB: Tough Terabyte

22 Mar, 2011, 4:38 pm IST | by Rossi Fernandes | External drives External drives

The drive is available in different colours

The drive is available in different colours
A terabyte of portable space at your disposal

PRICE IN INDIA

5,590
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TECH2 RATING

7.5

AVERAGE USER RATING

How we test

CONTACT

Toshiba India Pvt Ltd (PC Division)

 abhishek.mehta@toshiba-india.com

 +91 9560 098870

  www.toshiba-india.com/laptop

Hard drive capacities are on the rise and only a few days back, we tested the Seagate Momentus 750GB, an internal hard drive for notebooks. Today, we're looking at something all of us could use, an external portable hard drive.

A terabyte of portable space at your disposal

A terabyte of portable space at your disposal

 

 

This Toshiba Canvio 1 TB drive is particularly interesting because we don't normally see too many Toshiba drives in the Indian market, and a one terabyte is a rare sight.

 

Design and Features

The Toshiba Canvio 1TB is a USB 2.0 compliant drive that has a rough-and-tough shell. I have to say I’m personally not very fond of the design of the drive. Seagate and WD don’t have too many variations in the design of their models, but they are still aesthetically pleasing. Being an external drive, it’s not something that can be completely ignored either. The drive is a tad bulkier than some of the other portable drives. Toshiba has included a long mini-USB cable with the drive. 

 

Test Rig Specifications

Processor: Intel Core i7-2600K CPU @ 3.40 GHz

Motherboard: GIGABYTE P67A-UD3R

Memory: Corsair Dominator GT 4 GB DDR3 (2 x 2 GB)

Hard drive: WD Velociraptor 300 GB

GPU: AMD Radeon HD 6970

PSU: Cooler Master 1000W

 

Performance

Before we get on straight to the performance, it’s worth mentioning that we noticed some problems while connecting the drive to some of the PCs and laptops in the labs. The drive wouldn’t get detected. We’re not totally sure if this is a problem with the review sample or the PC. We proceeded to set up the drive on our test rig and faced no issues whatsoever with the drive or its performance. 

The drive is available in different colours

The drive is available in different colours

 

 

Our usual data sets of 4GB were used for this test. With USB 2.0, we’ve noticed that the best drives are limited around 33 – 34 MB/s mark. With our set of file copy tests completed, it’s clear that the drive performs pretty well in both the synthetic and real world tests. File transfer speeds while reading random sets of data files was always above 30MB/s. Write speeds for sequential files was around 28.8MB/s, which is still pretty good. Write speeds only dropped to 21.43MB/s while trying to copy 4GB of assorted data to the drive. SiSoft Sandra’s synthetic tests only supported all of the real-world scores. The drive index for the read test was 31.15MB/s and 28.8 while writing data.

 

Verdict

The Toshiba Canvio with its good performance doesn’t surprise us. Most of the drives we’ve tested in the past come with more or less the same kind of scores. The USB 2.0 speed limitation has never made external portable hard drives an exciting space. The Canvio 1TB unfortunately is no different. The larger capacity and the pricing is what makes or breaks this product. The MRP for the product was stated at Rs. 10,990. The market price on the other hand is around Rs. 8,000, which makes it a slightly expensive product. Some sources state prices to be as low as Rs. 6,500. At Rs. 6,500, it’s an affordable buy if you’re looking just storage space. The price is roughly the same as drives from other manufacturers. However, we would highly recommend making the move to USB 3.0 spec hardware at the earliest. The performance jump from USB 2.0 to USB 3.0 is amazing to say the least.

Tags: Toshiba Canvio 1TB , portable , hard drive , external , 1 TB , 1 terabyte , storage , memory , space , External drives , Storage , Toshiba India Pvt Ltd (PC Division) , Toshiba Canvio 2.0 1 TB

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The Tech2 Labs receives many products every single week and each of them is tested with the utmost care and highest level of objectivity. There’s a constant effort to reduce and totally eliminate subjectivity. Each product is tested according to set test processes so the same test scenario is used.

Verdict
The ratings awarded to a product are derived from a number of tests and calculations, keeping certain important factors in mind. These factors consist of features, performance, quality and value for money. In case of software and some other categories, build quality might be replaced with ease of use or ease of installation. Products are compared with other products in a similar price range or product category.


Features
The features component of the score is rated based on the kind of features present on a particular product. Features are a big part of what people look for when they’re buying a new product such as a phone or a camera.

Performance
The performance score is derived from the benchmarks and tests run on the product. In case of the subjective scores, an average of the scores given by the group of reviewers is considered.

Build Quality
The build quality of a product is important so that it doesn’t fall apart after some use. The build quality scores from the way the product is designed and the kind of materials used in the product.

Value
Value for money comes from the fact that a cheap product is able to provide most of the performance of a higher priced product. Once again, value for money is judged by comparing pricing and performance of products in a particular price range or category. 

There are many other aspects of the product that are looked at such as the bundled software and accessories. All of these scores are aggregated together to form the final score.

What do the ratings mean?

Ratings are simple - higher the score, the better the product. A brief listing of the features and what they mean are given below.

1 - 3

The product is bad in almost every aspect. We strongly advise against purchasing this product.

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An average product that isn't the best you can buy, but isn't the worst either.

7 - 8

Product with this rating is highly recommended because it's priced sensibly, has a good set of features and performs well.

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Exceptionally excellent product with features and performance unlike any we've seen in the past. A must-have for everyone!

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