One Gigabyte (1GB) means 10 9 = 1,000,000,000 bytes and One Terabyte (1TB) means 10 12 = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes using powers of 10. A computer operating system, however, reports storage capacity using powers of 2 for the definition of 1GB = 2 30 = 1,073,741,824 bytes and 1TB = 2 40 = 1,099,511,627,776 bytes, and therefore shows less storage capacity. Available storage capacity (including examples of various media files) will vary based on file size, formatting, settings, software and operating system and other factors. Actual formatted capacity may vary. Compatibility may vary depending on user's hardware configuration and operating system. Reformatting required for use with Mac® or other operating systems. However, it does offer decent performance for a 5400rpm 2.5in spinning platter hard drive. When transferring large files it writes at 122MB/s. Transferring 10GB of data will take around a minute and a half. That compares poorly with the Samsung SpinPoint M9T drive, released this year that has a higher platter density (three 667GB platters), four times the cache size (32MB) and is way thinner (9.5mm versus 15mm). As a side note, not surprisingly, Toshiba's bare drive costs about 25% more than its external version. Verdict

The Toshiba Canvio Advance comes ready to plug into a Windows computer. That means it’s formatted to the NTFS file system, which makes the drive read-only if used with a Mac. If you need much faster speeds, you’ll haver to stump up for a 2.5in SSD. But for the price of a 2TB Toshiba Canvio Advance you’ll only get a ~250GB SSD.

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Gbit/s is the interface transfer rate per the specifications of the Universal Serial Bus 3.0. Actual transfer rate will vary depending on your system configuration and other factors.

The drive that Toshiba used is likely to be the MQ01ABB200 which was launched in 2013; it is a 15mm model that has four 500GB platters, a 5,400RPM rotational speed, 8MB buffer and an average seek time of 12ms/22ms in read/write. We started with CrystalDiskMark. We used a 4GB test file and ran five sequences of tests, measuring sequential read and write speeds, as well as random read and write speeds. Sequential speeds were excellent, faster than Western Digital Elements by a significant margin, but the random speed suffered. Read and write speed may vary depending on the host device, read and write conditions, and file size.If you want amazing file-juggling performance, the Toshiba Canvio Advance is not the drive to buy. Even a budget SSD will be much faster. We also ran a test by copying a 2.3GB folder filled with photos, videos and documents to the drive and measuring the time it took to copy. The Canvio Basics drive we tested hovered around 140 megabytes per second throughout the transfer, resulting in a time of only 16.61 seconds, which is impressive. Despite costing more to build, external drives sell for cheaper because manufacturers such as Toshiba and Seagate are ready to sacrifice margins for sales volume. Additionally, there are several SSD-based external devices that can provide faster speeds, and the advent of cheaper NVME enclosures means that achievable speeds from these devices outstrip that of the Canvio Basics. As they are Solid State Disks too, they come with less risk when being transported than the spinning disk. One (1) year standard limited warranty applies. The warranty brochure is preloaded on the hard drive or can be viewed online at: http://storage.toshiba.com/consumer-hdd/support/warranty-info.

Because it’s a limited warranty, there are many stipulations contained within. In short, if Toshiba can justify any misuse on your part that caused the drive to fail, your warranty request won’t be honored. Plus, missing items, such as the included USB cable, won’t be replaced under the warranty. The Elements drives are the best point of comparison because they essentially look the same as the Canvio Basics drives. The Toshiba drives have a flat top, while the Western Digital drives are curved, but, for the most part, they’re the same. Likewise, you get a USB micro type B to type A cable in the box. Our “chkdsk” test on Windows 10 took around two hours to complete, but, thankfully, found no errors. Unlike CrystalDiskInfo, this test takes a deep dive into the drive, scanning it for bad clusters and sectors. Fortunately, Canvio Basics came out clean.Reformatting it for Mac use only takes a minute or so using OS X’s Disk Utility, but this point is worth considering for those buying for someone with limited tech chops. Toshiba makes a version of its Premium model pre-formatted for Mac use. Hard drives may be relatively slow, but they still have their place. And unlike old hard drives, the Toshiba Canvio Advance’s read/write noise is barely noticeable, particularly if there’s a laptop/desktop/console fan whirring away nearby.