Toshiba Canvio Advance 2TB
Slim and sturdy storage.
The Toshiba Canvio Advance is an external hard drive that comes in 1TB, 2TB and 3TB capacities. It offers a lot of storage for not that much money and is a middle-ranking model in the Toshiba line-up. It uses two platters and is a 2.5-inch drive, letting it slim down to 14mm thickness. Upgrade to the Canvio Premium and you shave off an extra 0.5mm and get an extra USB-C cable in the box.
As with a lot of portable drives, the Canvio’s cable isn’t that long, at around 45cm. And as it uses an old-style micro USB 3.0 port on the drive itself, it’s unlikely many will have a suitable spare lying around. The cable ends in a standard USB port — bear this in mind if you have a new laptop that only has USB-C connectors. There’s a backup utility that makes the Canvio auto-copy files from Windows folders you select, at an interval you choose, and a security app that lets you password protect files. Both are basic, and lack the supplementary cloud some drive manufacturers offer, but are quite easy to use.
If you want amazing file-juggling performance, the Canvio is not the drive to buy. Even a budget SSD will be much faster. It does offer decent performance for a 5,400rpm drive, though. When transferring large files, it writes at 122MB/s. Transferring 10GB of data will take around a minute and a half. Write speeds level out at 141MB/s, the norm for a drive like this.
There are a few things you need to consider, but pass all those tests and you’ll find this a convenient, portable way to boost your PC’s storage.