INTRODUCTION

   Although I’m pretty much certain that most people reading these lines right now own several terabytes of data stored inside one or more desktop drives (both internal and external) i can't be as certain of your portable storage needs. For some people i know even a 32GB USB flash drive is more than enough while for others even 2TB portable hard drives can't seem to keep up with their work and/or hobbies. Personally after some drive problems a few years ago I’ve grown to be an overcautious man so i like to keep backups of most things in our lab on both portable and desktop hard drives and for good or bad this has skyrocketed our storage media capacity/needs to well over 50 terabytes (still nothing compared to some people i know who have over 100 terabytes worth of data). However when I’m on the road even a 2TB portable hard drive is sufficient and since i believe the same applies to most of you out there today we're going to be taking a look at the Canvio Alu 2TB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive by Toshiba.

   Toshiba Europe GmbH Storage Peripherals Division, in Neuss, Germany, markets hard disk drives, solid state drives and flash storage solutions. Aiming at consumers and retailers in Europe, its current product range spans from HDDs, SSDs, memory cards, USB flash drives to wireless storage solutions. For over 40 years, Toshiba has been developing and manufacturing storage solutions used by most major IT and consumer electronics brands.

   It may not be the first time we've seen a USB 3.0 compatible 2.5" external hard drive nor the first time we've tested one with a rather high storage capacity of 2TB (also available in 2.5TB/1TB/500GB capacities) but the Canvio Alu is quite unique since compared to most models in the market that feature hard plastic, rubber and/or metal housings it features one made entirely out of aluminum. I'm not however just referring to looks (it does look nice however) but to the "benefits" of aluminum since not only does it dissipate heat incredibly fast but it's also very lightweight. Under the housing Toshiba has used their MQ01UBB200 2.5" SATA II (300) drive (9.5mm thick) which features a rotational speed of 5400RPM and 8MB Cache. I was somewhat surprised to see that Toshiba used a 2.5" drive with just 8MB cache and i do expect that to have a negative impact in the performance of this drive but the how much well that remains to be seen.