Toshiba 1 5 TB Toshiba Canvio 3 0 Plus Portable Hard Drive in Black HDTC615XK3B1

Toshiba Canvio 1.0 TB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive - HDTC610XK3B1 (Black) Great solid drives without any junkware installed. I used to be a Western Digital Fan, but after WD started rolling out Smartware & Virtual CD to their external disk without giving the user any option, I started looking into other brands. First I bought a Seagate, big mistake. Clicking noise & failed disk in less than two months. Then I looked at Toshiba & my 1st one was a 640 GB in 2010. After I filled the space on that one, I wanted another one, but the 640 was replaced with USB 3.0 & now 1GB. So bought my 1st one & with in 2 month later I bough another one. I am very happy with Toshiba Canvio series & now I own a 640GB & two 1GB drive. Pros: - Solid performer & runs very quiet & fast, specially with the new ones with USB 3.0 is blazing fast (almost 4 times as my USB 2.0). - Rock solid USB 3.0 connection to enclosure itself & not like many other brands (Seagate) that have flimsy USB connection to the drive that separates with small tap. - Easily recognized & shared between Windows XP, Linux & windows 7 (64bit) without any issue. - No junkware built into the firmware (like WD smartware) & what ever is on the disk can be easily removed. Cons: They only negative is that the new enclosures are not as stylish as the old ones. It is bulkier & uses cheap looking hard plastic versus the older enclosures were very stylish & looked like aluminum casing with absorbing impact rubber stripe around the case. The new casing looks cheap plastic regardless of color. Other than above, it is the best available comparing the price & quality with other brands. Read more

Connected to my Google Nexus 7 2013 tablet without the slighest hitch. All it took is an OTG three way cable and a nice app from the Google Play Store. Total setup time was less than 15 minutes, and now my 16GB tablet has become a 1TB tablet, an increase of 100 fold for just about $60. Technical Notes: * I have not tried to reformat the drive with ext4. It is still the original NTFS. Although I generally dislike things m$, NTFS is actually a very nice logging file system. For my application, ext4 offers no distinct advantage. * I did not see an NTFS formatter on the Android system. This is the main reason for not trying to replace it with another filesystem; without an NTFS formatter, there is no way to restore the drive to its original configuration. * Make SURE you use a three-way cable adapter: # The cable is arranged in a Y form. The bottom Is micro-USB. It plugs into the tablet. # One leg is USB-2 male 'A' plug. This goes into the end of the cable coming from the drive. # The other leg is micro-USB female. It connects with the cable coming from a charger. This _MUST_ Connected to a charger! Otherwise the drive will try to run on the power coming out of the tablet. This is very bad form! * To manage the disk mounting, filed browsing, etc, install the "USB OTG Helper" app, and the "OI File Manager" app. Follow all relevant instructions in the apps, as well in the Play Store listings for these apps. Set the first app to auto-mount, use the OI file manager and remember which fm to use. * To be useful, you should use a kernel less constricted/castrated than what magog issues. I use the ElementalX one with great success. The device should be rooted and have a good playbox installed. See below. Definitions; OTG : Normally, the USB socket in the tablet is configured to behave like a peripheral of some other computer. On The Go mode reverses it and makes the tablet into a "host" so it will control peripherals correctly. OTG cables are made for that and perhaps have some pins reversed. Rooting: Normally multi-tasking, multi-user systems have some sort of privileged user, capable of performing administrative tasks. Magog, in their eternal wisdom abolished this mechanism. Rooting a device means installing some small program (su) which re-ensbles the Unix super user, called 'root'. BusyBox: A collection of ancient Unix tools and utilities that allow one to manage her/his device like s real administrator. NOTE: If you have the attitude of "I am dumb and cannot think for myself", which is what Magog thinks of you, DO NOT EVEN TRY this procedure. Also note that some of the steps involved in rooting an Android device can render it useless. In 99.9% of the cases, you can re-install the original system, using standard magog instructions. Read more

So far, so good on this drive. I haven't used it yet, but on hooking it up, I noticed quickly that it spins down when not in use. I have never had an external drive that does this and even my internal drive never stops. The drive and its housing seem solidly constructed and the cable fits well --- a snug fit on both ends. Time will tell whether it holds up and whether the quality is as high as it seems initially. Warning: Do not use any software that comes with one of these drives. Search for your choice of backup software that works for you. Also, you can easily disable the Autoplay feature by renaming the autorun file to autorun.txt UPDATE: 10-3-12 I have now used this drive for about 45 days and it works very well for the purposes now listed in the title. I have transfered large amounts of data to and from it and downloaded large files directly onto it. It works well, runs very cool and releases (unmounts) well from my Windoze computer. The problem I have experienced with reluctance to release is a result of Windoze continuing to run program processes after termination of the program. It is a problem with Windoze, not with the drive. I have addressed this issue with a utility (MemTurbo) and no longer have this difficulty. I have since bought a second drive of this kind and both work well. The price continues to drop. A very good value. REMEMBER: Do NOT USE the crapware that comes with this or any other external drive. Disable the autorun as described in the first part of this review. Read more