INTRODUCTION

   Portable hard drives (2.5") may never have been as compact as USB flash drives but thanks to their considerably larger data capacities they've always been an invaluable asset for both professionals and consumers alike. Needless to say, portable solid state drives have changed the "landscape" of things lately but performance (and size) differences aside portable hard drives still enjoy the best price/capacity ratio currently in the market. That being said even though 5TB is the highest capacity one can opt for today 2TB models far exceed them in terms of popularity (especially among consumers) and so today I’ll be testing the latest model by Toshiba and more specifically their Canvio Advance USB 3.2 Gen 1 Portable Storage.

   Toshiba Electronics Europe GmbH (TEE) is the European electronic components business of Toshiba Electronic Devices and Storage Corporation. TEE offers European consumers and businesses a wide variety of innovative hard disk drive (HDD) products plus semiconductor solutions for automotive, industrial, IoT, motion control, telecoms, networking, consumer and white goods applications. The company’s broad portfolio encompasses integrated wireless ICs, power semiconductors, microcontrollers, optical semiconductors, ASSPs and discrete devices ranging from diodes to logic ICs. TEE has headquarters in Düsseldorf, Germany, with branch offices in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom providing sales, marketing, and engineering. Company president is Mr. Tomoaki Kumagai.

   The Canvio Advance series of portable hard drives by Toshiba has been around for quite some time now which is why I need to point out that the model in my hands today is the updated (also refered to as V10, Backup 2.0 and/or Advance 2.5) version released last year which one can easily tell apart from its predecessor thanks to the new housing Toshiba used (textured finish instead of a polished/glossy one). This series is currently available in 1/2/4TB capacities, 4 different colors (black, red, green and light beige) and fully supports Toshiba's storage security and backup software suites. As for the drive in my hands under its textured enclosure Toshiba has placed their 7mm thick MQ04ABD200 SATA III 2.5" drive which features a rotational speed of 5400RPM together with 128MB of cache/buffer and an MTTF (mean time to failure) of 600.000 hours. Last but not least Toshiba covers the entire Canvio Advance line of portable hard drives with a 2 year limited warranty.