INTRODUCTION

   As most of you know due to the somewhat recent HDD price drops and the continuous increase in storage capacity needs lately we've been focusing on storage related reviews from internal HDDs (consumer and enterprise grade) and up to external HDDs (both 3.5" and 2.5"). However it's important that don't lose sight of what's really important and that is to cover all our readers out there with our reviews and so although we've tested quite a few external 2.5" drives lately most of them were large capacity ones with rugged enclosures. Still although having an external HDD with a rugged housing is never a bad thing because of their size and design it's somewhat difficult to carry them around in your back pocket. Well luckily Toshiba has that covered with their brand new STOR.E SLIM 500GB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive.

   Toshiba Europe Storage Products Division (SPD) has remained at the forefront of the storage industry for over 40 years and is the world's only storage supplier that owns design, development, manufacturing, sales and other infrastructure functions spanning the enterprise, mobile and retail environments for both HDD and SSD products. Customers are original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), system integrators and distributors within the EMEA region. As a leading provider of integrated storage solutions and as the principal inventor of NAND flash storage, Toshiba sets many of today’s industry standards for storage technology. Throughout its history, Toshiba SPD has revolutionized the design and development of storage devices and its drives can be found inside the world's leading GPS navigation systems, consumer electronics, computers and enterprise solutions. In addition, Toshiba Storage Products Division offers an extensive range of advanced technology drives such as high durability 24/7, extended temperature and SSDs for the consumer, industrial, enterprise and automotive sector.

   As clearly revealed by its name the STOR.E SLIM is a portable hard drive with a very slim yet quite elegant brushed aluminum housing (available in black and silver) featuring USB 3.0 connectivity for very fast data transfer speeds. So thanks to the very slim exterior the STOR.E SLIM can virtually fit in just about every pocket there is so kudos to Toshiba for that since there aren't that many similar solutions out there. Certainly the interior matters just as much to some people (if not more) and so under the hood Toshiba has placed their very own MQ01UBF050 2.5" SATA II 500GB HDD (5400RPM/8MB Cache/7.5mm) that actually did surprisingly well in all our tests across the board. Time to see what the new STOR.E SLIM 500GB USB 3.0 portable hard drive by Toshiba is all about.