Toshiba Canvio, any good?

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mbg10484

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Hi, I need a new external HDD. will be getting either a 750GB or 1TB. Pretty much only considering WD and Toshiba based on price point and user reviews. I was originally set on getting the toshiba because its cheaper than its WD counterpart, and I already have a Toshiba 320GB external drive I got almost 3 years ago (HDDR320E03X) that still works perfectly and has never had any problems what so ever.

However Reading through some of the reviews, there seems to be a bunch of complaints about either the "bridge" and/or the USB connection. People saying that you have to wiggle the cable around and such to get it to mount correctly in windows. Then Some people are saying it uses a proprietary USB cable. Looking at the pictures though, it looks exactly like a standard USB 3.0 Micro-B connector. also there were a bunch of people saying that there Canvio died within a month or 2 and even 1 said it was DOA. It seems like there were more of these bad reviews of drives failing then back when I got my 320GB drive.... one of the main reasons I went with toshiba is because of the lack of such reviews (at that time). And yet there are still more positive reviews than negative (on amazon, 5 star to 1 star ratio ~ 3:1 and 5 star + 4 star to 1 star ratio ~ 4:1)

Just wondering is your take on the new Toshiba Canvio drives (HDTC610XK3B1) and do they use a proprietary USB cable? The WD passport (WDBBEP0010BRD-NESN) looks to have the same exact connection/cable type as this supposed Toshiba proprietary one.... which make me wonder if these people are just not aware of the new usb 3.0 connectors?
 
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tomatthe

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I've seen the same thing mentioned for the WD line of drives about it using a proprietary connector, but it looks just like the normal USB 3.0 to me as well. I have one of the Toshiba drives, and the connection is absolutely terrible. It's not just crappy on the side that connects to the drive itself, but the side you connect to a machine is also very temperamental. We ended up with about 6 of them for work, and every single one has issues with the connection. You have to fiddle with them every single time you use it to get the connection to work, and then make sure you don't touch it while moving any files around.

I would not recommend the Toshiba just based on dealing with those connection issues regardless of drive itself.
 
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mbg10484

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So are the actuall connections/ports on the drive crap, or the included cable? If you say there are problems on the PC side as well, that makes it sound like its the cable... in that case (assuming it does NOT use a proprietary cable) buying a better cable could potentially fix it. By any chance have you tried that?
 
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tomatthe

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The cable on the drive side is very floppy, bends up/down with ease. This is sort of the case with the usb 3.0 connections in general I've found though. The pc side you basically have to 1/2 way remove the cable from the pc to get it to be recognized.

No new cables tried, but I'm not entirely certain why you are asking all those questions rather then just buying a different product. If you want the Toshiba drive go for it, and hopefully you won't have any issues just offering my exp with the drives.
 
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Kevin Brogan

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Maybe it's a bit late to add to this, but i can confirm the wobbly cable issue.

The problem doesn't appear to be the drive, as a standard usb 2 micro cable will connect with no issues at all, no power loss, etc. But I don't know how the micro usb 3 connection works so....

Anyways, my observations.

Computer side of the cable needs to be pulled out about a millimeter from all the way plugged in, on some usb 2.0 ports, but not all of them. I haven't noticed any issues with any usb 3.0 ports, only 2.0 ports. Port or cable? who knows.

Drive side of the cable needs to handled with care. It will wobble a good 10 degrees or so when fully inserted, and will disconnect the drive completely when "wobbled up", but seems to be stable when "wobbled down". When it disconnects, it loses power. I did not notice this behaviour when I first got the drive. It has gotten worse as time goes on, so maybe I should be blaming the drive and not the cable. Could be it's just the smaller side port on the drive that is having issues, which would explain why the usb2.0 cable works fine.

No connection issues with a standard usb 2.0 a to micro b cable. I don't have any other 3.0 a to micro b cables to test so I can't confirm if it's the cable or the drive.
 
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mbg10484

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Turns out there is NO proprietary cable. the USB 3.0 cables (at least the one that came with my drive) are thicker than the usb 2.0 cables and very stiff. The connection on the drive end is completely solid, however, the connection on the computer side seems to wobble slightly. I'm assuming that's just normal wear and tear, exacerbated by the stiff cable.
 
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Profsinc

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Thanks for posting this. My problem exactly. My 1T Tosh. portable drive, 3.0, the cable connection at the drive gets progressively worse, now it won't power at all! And the Toshiba site says nothing but send it in for warranty replacements. Tough luck on my data.
I did separate the lid, as per YouTube, it just snaps apart with a utility knife as pry bar. Just a controller/USB 3.0 adapter board inside plus the standard notebook-size drive.
It doesn't look like anything is amiss, like a solder disconnection. So I'm stumped. Are there particular tabs or prongs or anything to check or bend back. I don't know what to do now.
 
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Heider

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Hi Profsinc,

I have always used Western Digital for almost the past 20 years, had no problems whatsoever with any of these.

I don't know what was wrong with me two months ago when I decided to use a Toshiba 1TB this time, since last week I've been battling to copy what's left out of my files. Last week I booked a trip to take the family with me, and backing up the HD was supposed to be a day's job, however, I was severely-shocked to see bad-sectors preventing the backup, which put me in such a bad mood during my holiday.

This is the Internal 2.5 Inch Toshiba 1TB HD, that is the same what the put into the external USB/Exclosures which I am now trying my best to get rid of, I am backing up into a brand new WD hard disk as we speak and hoping to drop this Toshiba HD into the bin whenever it's done copying, this has been one of the most annoying experiences of my life.

My advice, and saying this painfully, "if you care about your data, DO NOT buy a Toshiba Hard Disk 1TB", Stay with Western Digital as in my opinion are the best of the best HDs.

I hope this helps.

Kind Regards
Heider
 
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BBradd

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WARNING! DATA are NOT SAFE on Toshiba STOR.E CANVIO 2T USB3.0 ext. hdd!

Because of bad quality/design of the sata to usb 2/3 bridgecard parts and the powersupply to the internal hdd.
ALL DATA are not reliable stored/access on the hdd, because the hdd can't get a proper powersupply.

You can read all the bad reviews on amazon about many new usb 3.0 Toshiba external hdd, with hdd failures sooner or later.

I'm an electronics engineer and I just bought the Toshiba Stor.e Canvio 2T USB3.0 HDWC120EW3J1.
As soon as I format the hdd into many partitions and do full format with windows disk manager, the hdd made loud clicking and slissing/motor noises as intermittent lost/not get enough power.
Few times full format can be completed and many times, it just hangup and using windows chkdsk /f/v/r on the full format completed partitions, will give the whole partitions data error/unreadable.

So I broke the hdd case open and use the bare sata hdd with an ext. dockingstation with true 5V/12V powersupply. Now there are never clicking noises and did a very intensive 24hrs+ hdd formating/testing and the conclusion is that the internal DT01ABA200 hdd is working perfect.

I recommend you people with the ext. usb 3.0 hdd, do the chkdsk /f/v/r test and verify!
 
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rrefr

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I want to confirm what BBradd has already written about Toshiba STOR.E CANVIO 2T USB 3.0 ext. hdd
First thing I did when I unboxed the disk was to eliminate the partitions already present at the disk using XP Disk Manager and create a new 600GB partition using NTFS. The format never ended.
Then I tried again with smaller partitions 400MB, 200MB and 100MB both using NTFS and FAT32.
In all cases the format process ended with the message that Format was not completed due to errors.
The loud clicking and slissing/motor noises happened exactly as BBradd described.



 
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whiteraven5

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My Toshiba HDD is less than 2 years old and I think the damn thing died on me yesterday. At first the laptop failed to recognise it - unplugging and plugging it in helped a bit but now it is completely off the grid.
 
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EO34

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Hey BBradd do you mind sharing which one in particularly did you use. Docking station that is?




 
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rebellman

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Gurdip

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rebellman

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What we're talking about IS USB 3.0. It doesn't work with USB 3.0. It's just another way for these thieves to rip everyone off in yet another way. If everyone would quit buying this junk for a while theDr guys would stop selling junk, but nobody's going to do that, so get over it.
 
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BooToshiba

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The new ones, " Canvio connect" series have the 3.0 usb interface soldered directly onto the 2.5 inch laptop hdd. No more cracking open and snagging the drive out of them.
 
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realnoize

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I've been having strange boot problems as of late, and discovered that my Toshiba Canvio HDD (2TB model HDWC120XK3J1) is preventing my PC to boot properly when the drive has been shut off because of inactivity. If the drive is "active", I don't have any boot problem. If I shut off my PC for the night, the next morning, it won't boot.

Unplugging the Toshiba Canvio HDD solves the problem. I also have other external HDDs (other brands) and I've got no problems with them.

I'm tempted to open the enclosure and remove the drive from it and use it internaly, as I've read many places on the web that the SATA to USB adapter Toshiba is using in some of their enclosures are not very good.

Also, from what I can see, failure rate of these drive (well, the Canvio desktop series) seems pretty high. I rarely saw as much comments from people who had a specific HDD die on them in less than a year as for these type of drives.

Toshiba internal drives seems to be well-rated, generally, but their external ones, and particularly these Canvio Desktop series, tend to have a higher failure rate than the competition from what I can get from customers comments and reviews on various vendors websites.
 
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mscroggi

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FWIW - I have a 1TB Canvio. I was a little nervous about it but bought it anyway from Best Buy during one of the black friday periods.. (it was only $59) I have had it for over a year.. I have to say it has been rock solid. I havent been especially careful with it, and I have lent it out to others.. It has never given me any trouble whatsoever. In reading an earlier post, I suppose it must be of the improved cable mount design.
 
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jidanni

jidanni

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Let us even 'try' this 'drive' on Linux,
# mkfs.ext4 -v /dev/sdb1
mke2fs 1.42.12 (29-Aug-2014)
/dev/sdb1 contains a ntfs file system labelled 'TOSHIBA EXT'
Proceed anyway? (y,n) y
Warning, had trouble writing out superblocks.

Update 2016/6: it turns out it works fine in Debian Linux IF one connects it via a USB3 cable to a USB3 computer. No USB2 stuff in the path.
 
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