You’ll see slightly better results from a larger 7200rpm desktop drive, but we do mean slight. Write speeds level out at 141MB/s, which again is the norm for a 5400rpm drive. This gives it an average of around 85MB/s. It takes 271 seconds to copy over the 23GB, 5376-file Steam install of Alien: Isolation, for example. Spinning platter hard drives are impacted quite dramatically when transferring lots of smaller files, though. Transferring 10GB of data will take around a minute and a half. When transferring large files it writes at 122MB/s. However, it does offer decent performance for a 5400rpm 2.5in spinning platter hard drive. If you want amazing file-juggling performance, the Toshiba Canvio Advance is not the drive to buy. Like other 2.5-inch drives, no separate power supply is needed. You don’t get anything in the box bar the drive and the cable, because the Canvio Advance is powered by the USB port. Both are basic, and lack the supplementary cloud some drive manufacturers offer, but are quite easy to use. There’s a backup utility that makes the Toshiba Canvio Advance auto-copy files from Windows folders you select, at an interval you choose, and a security app that lets you password protect files. All that comes on the drive as standard are a couple of documents and a web link, from which you download the two pieces of “included” software. If you’re buying for a Windows system you do not need to do anything, though. However, to use it with a PS4 you’ll need to format it to the FAT32 or exFAT file formats. Toshiba makes a version of its Premium model pre-formatted for Mac use.ĭoes it work with game consoles? We tried the Toshiba Canvio Advance with both an Xbox One and PS4. Reformatting it for Mac use only takes a minute or so using OS X’s Disk Utility, but this point is worth considering for those buying for someone with limited tech chops.

That means it’s formatted to the NTFS file system, which makes the drive read-only if used with a Mac.

The Toshiba Canvio Advance comes ready to plug into a Windows computer. The cable ends in a standard USB port - bear this in mind if you have a new laptop that only has USB-C connectors. And as it uses an old-style microUSB 3.0 port on the drive itself, it’s unlikely many will have a suitable spare lying around. There’s limited scope to hide this drive. It measures around 45cm from the end of one terminal to another. This looks nice enough, but may not be wanted if the Toshiba Canvio Advance will spend its life under a TV with the rest of your home entertainment gear, rather than living plugged into a desktop or laptop.Īs with a lot of portable drives, the Toshiba Canvio Advance’s cable isn’t that long either.

Xbox 2tb external hard drive