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.

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

PACKAGING AND CONTENTS

You can take a quick look at the Canvio Alu, it's capacity and main features from the front of the box.

The main features are also listed on the left side right above the system requirements and bundle contents.

At the rear we also see the product features printed in 9 languages and placed right beneath a direct performance comparison between a USB 2.0 drive and the Canvio Alu.

The box contains the Canvio Alu 2.5" PHD, USB 3.0 cable, warranty information papers (for various countries) and the user manual.

THE CANVIO ALU

The 240g heavy Canvio Alu 2TB measures 113.5mm in length, 75mm in width and 18mm in height.

To showcase its size we used two portable hard drives by Seagate, the Backup Plus 4TB and the Slim 1TB.

A single HDD activity LED (blue) is placed at the top of the Canvio Alu.

The USB 3.0 host port is placed at the rear end of the drive.

A small sticker at the rear of the drive contains information like the capacity, barcodes and the serial and part numbers of the product.

TEST BED

TESTING METHODOLOGY

   Keeping things simple so even people new in the field of computers can understand will always be our way so once again our testing procedure is almost exactly the same as the one we use with 2.5/3.5" external docking stations. This time however we will be comparing the product at hand with a wide range of 2.5" portable drives and standalone 2.5" enclosures all of which were benched using a HGST 7K750 SATA II hard disk drive. Our standard selection of benchmark suites is used here as well including the famous HD Tach RW (Long Bench 32mb Zones), HD Tune Pro (read/write -when possible- speeds), Sisoftware Sandra Pro (Read/Write - also when possible- speeds), AIDA64 (Linear Read/Random Read), Crystal Disk Mark x64 (100MB/1000MB read/write speeds) and finally the quite outdated yet highly reliable ATTO 2.47 (Max Read/Max Write speeds). Every test was repeated for a total of 6 times and after that the average (not peak) numbers were recorded into our charts. As always every test was performed in a fresh installation of Microsoft Windows 7 Service Pack 1 with every update installed up to December 15th 2015.

TEST RESULTS - AIDA64 / ATTO

TEST RESULTS - HD TACH RW / HD TUNE PRO

TEST RESULTS - SISOFTWARE SANDRA PRO / CRYSTAL DISK MARK X64

TEST RESULTS - TEMPERATURES

CONCLUSION

   After wrapping up all tests it seems I was partially right to worry about the performance of the MQ01UBB200 drive. The reason I say partially is because although the Canvio Alu is not the fastest USB 3.0 portable hard drive in our charts (it actually lands somewhere at the middle) still its read & write performance is not bad at all especially since a 10-15% difference will not make a difference, at least not to the majority of users out there. In terms of quality if I was to “ignore” every rugged enclosure 2.5” model to ever pass through our lab then the housing of the Canvio Alu is clearly only 2^nd best to the one used with the Seven model by Seagate (I don’t really need to point out that it does a very good job with the drives temperatures).

   Unfortunately since Toshiba sometimes launches different products inside the EU and different ones inside the USA the Canvio Alu 2TB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive is not available on the other side of the Atlantic. Still you can find it inside the EU for just 103.32Euros (Amazon.de – Price depends on the color) a price tag which is quite justified. Quality, performance, capacity and a good price tag the Canvio Alu has it all and because of that it gets our Golden Award.

PROS

- Excellent Build Quality
- 2TB Capacity
- Very Good Performance
- Very Low Temperatures
- NTI Backup Now EZ Software
- 4 Available Colors
- Price (For Some)

CONS

- Size (Compared To the Backup Plus 4TB by Seagate)