Toshiba Canvio Basics 2TB Portable USB 3.0 HDD Review

Introduction Toshiba has launched a new version of their Canvio drives, and today I'm taking a closer look at the Canvio Basics (product link) with a 2TB capacity. Other capacity options available include 500GB, 750GB, 1TB, 2.5TB and 3TB. The compact HDD is pocket-sized and as such perfect for the person on the go who also requires a lot of storage capacity. Don't Forget HDDs in the Wake of SSDs It is easy to forget all about mechanical hard disk drives when you've had SSDs in your system for a long time. After all, they aren't new. But the traditional hard disk has a lot of merits, and it's still a valid choice for many situations. Not only are hard disk drives cheaper than their solid state brothers, but they also come with higher capacity options. Toshiba Canvio Basics 2TB The drive we're looking at today is the Toshiba Canvio Basics, which as the name suggests, keeps things basic. You get an excellent portable drive without all the extra bells and whistles which can increase the price. If you don't need extra drop protection, water resistance, or dust protection, then why should you pay for it? There are many situations where those things are unnecessary. The matte-black drive is a USB 3.0 drive (USB 3.1 Gen.1). While that isn't the latest standard, it offers plenty of bandwidth for a mechanical 2.5-inch HDD. And that is what's on the inside of the Canvio Basics shell. The advantage of 2.5-inch drives over their 3.5-inch brothers is that it's easily BUS-powered. They don't require an extra external power source to run as they should. The USB port delivers plenty of power for this type drives, even when connected to a USB 2.0 port. The Toshiba Canvio Basics consumes a maximum of 900mA power, even in the largest capacity version. Pocket-Sized and Lightweight The Canvio Basics is a very portable drive. With its small size of just 119 by 79 mm, it will comfortably fit into most pockets. The three smallest versions, up to 1TB, are 15mm thin while the 2TB I'm testing today, and its larger brothers are 20.5mm thin. Neither of the two is a lot. The drive series isn't heavy either with the highest capacity weighing a mere 230 grammes. Sure, that's not as light as an SSD would be, but it still isn't a lot. Ready to use out of the box Toshiba made your life easy when you're getting a Canvio Basics portable drive. The drive is ready to use right out of the box. It comes pre-formatted with an NTFS file system, and it is properly aligned. It is also compatible with the HFS+ file system for Mac OS, but that will require a re-format. Included on the drive is the manual in PDF format, should you need that. Also included is the micro-B USB cable which you'll need to connect the drive to your USB port. Feature Highlights USB 3.0 (backwards compatible to USB 2.0) Preformatted in NTFS and aligned USB bus-powered Small size and lightweight Package and Accessories The drive comes in a bright green package which has the vital details such as capacity and connection type printed right on the front. The 2-year warranty and easy setup are highlighted next to a picture of the included drive. The rear side doesn't have a lot more than the fact that it's as easy to use as connecting it and dragging files onto the drive. Within the package are the legal and supported notes along with the connection cable. The drive itself is well packed and securely wrapped in an air-bag. Test Setup & Methodology Data Fillage There are many ways to test a storage drive, and we have chosen to include close to every test possible. We will start with a typical benchmark analysis of the formatted drive with various village scenarios. A mechanical drive will have to move its read-heads over the surface to reach the data location, and that has a natural impact on the performance. To see the impact it might have, the drive will be tested empty as well as with 25%, 50%, and 75% space usage. For these tests, we will be using Anvil’s Storage Utilities, AS SSD Benchmark, ATTO Benchmark, and CrystalDiskMark. Plain Drive Performance Following the fillage tests, the partition gets removed, and we check the drive’s raw performance. These tests will determine the hardware’s capabilities while eliminating any interference from the set file system. AIDA64’s storage benchmark and IOmeter are both great tools for this, and they help us paint an even clearer picture of the drive. The IOmeter tests I run are quite different from the rest as they will give a final result after a longer performance test rather than a maximum or average score; this gives us yet another view of the tested drive over the regular tests. Hardware Supermicro C7Z270-PG Intel Core i7-7700K Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4 2400MHz (4x8GB) Toshiba OCZ VX500 512GB SSD be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 (1200W) Noctua NH-D15S Software used: AIDA64 Storage Benchmark Anvil's Storage Utilities AS SSD Benchmark ATTO Benchmark CrystalDiskMark IOMeter Windows 10 Pro Each of the following pages will contain the benchmark screenshots with 0% and 75% data fillage for the base apps. The comparing charts will show the drives with 0% fillage for comparison reasons. The analysis charts show us how steady the performance is across the drive's surface and as it fills up. AIDA64 Engineer AIDA64 is a streamlined Windows diagnostic and benchmarking software for home users. It provides a wide range of features to assist in overclocking, hardware error diagnosis, stress testing, and sensor monitoring. It also has a disk benchmark tool, and that is the one I'll be using. Linear Performance The Linear Read and Write tests measure the sequential performance by reading or writing all sectors without skipping any. It gives, as the name says, a linear view on the drives overall performance from start to end. Random Performance The Random Read and Write tests measure the random performance by reading or writing variable-sized data blocks at random locations on the surface of the drive. The Random tests are a combination of both speed and access times as it moves the position before each new operation. Access Times The Access time tests are designed to measure the data access performance by reading or writing small 0.5KB data blocks at random locations on the drive surface. Anvil's Storage Utilities Anvil's Storage Utilities is a relative new benchmarking utility that can test hard drives and solid state drives, but also any other form of storage medium that you can throw at it. It is also free, which is a bonus in any case. Empty Drive 75% Data Fillage Drive Performance Analysis The drive-analysis shows the drive's performance over various fillage scenarios. The straighter the line, the better the result. We want a consistent performance across the entire drive. Drive Comparison For comparison reasons, the drive comparison chart will use values from the fresh and empty drive. AS SSD Benchmark The AS SSD software determines the performance of Solid State Drives (SSD). The tool contains five synthetic and three practice tests. The synthetic tests determine the sequential and random read and write performance of the SSD. These tests are performed without using the operating system caches. In Sequential tests, the program measures the time it takes to read and write a 1 GB file respectively. Empty Drive 75% Data Fillage Drive Performance Analysis The drive-analysis shows the drive's performance over various fillage scenarios. The straighter the line, the better the result. We want a consistent performance across the entire drive. Drive Comparison For comparison reasons, the drive chart will use values from the fresh and empty drive. ATTO Disk Benchmark The ATTO Disk Benchmark is a performance measurement tool is for Windows. It measures storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for both reads and writes. It has multiple options available to customise your performance measurement, including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. ATTO can be used to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives, so it is a popular tool everywhere. Empty Drive 75% Data Fillage Drive Performance Analysis The drive-analysis shows the drive's performance over various fillage scenarios. The straighter the line, the better the result. We want a consistent performance across the entire drive. Drive Comparison For comparison reasons, the drive comparison chart will use values from the fresh and empty drive. CrystalDiskMark CrystalDiskMark is a small HDD benchmark utility for your hard drive that enables you to rapidly measure sequential and random 4KB/512KB read/write speeds. Empty Drive 75% Data Fillage Drive Performance Analysis The drive-analysis shows the drive's performance over various fillage scenarios. The straighter the line, the better the result. We want a consistent performance across the entire drive. Drive Comparison For comparison reasons, the drive comparison chart will use values from the fresh and empty drive. IOmeter IOMeter is an I/O subsystem measurement and characterisation tool for single and clustered systems. It is used as a benchmark and troubleshooting tool and is easily configured to replicate the behaviour of many popular applications. One commonly quoted measurement provided by the tool is IOPS. Where most benchmarks show an average value, our IOmeter tests are a little different and show us the final result after a 20 minute continuously running test. Sequential Performance Random Performance Final Thoughts and Pricing Pricing When looking for just this drive that I've tested today, there are two things you can look for. As there are previous versions with the same name, that's a vital piece of information. Either the drive will be labelled as the 2018-version, or you can recognise it on the products number which starts with HDTB420. At the time of this review, Toshiba's Canvio Basics 2TB can be found on Amazon for £74.99 and $66.99. Final Thoughts On the outside, Toshiba's Canvio Basics 2TB looks like an ordinary portable hard disk drive, and it is. Still, it looks nice and has a nice feel to hold too. You get a lot of capacity options besides the 2TB version, but that's the one I tested today and the one we're talking about now. Design and feature-wise, there aren't a whole lot of surprises, it's a basic portable drive. But the name already reveals that fact. So instead of talking a lot about that, let us talk about the performance. Performance It is truly rare that a product surprises me these days. I've been doing this kind of review for quite some time, and I have tested a lot of storage drives. Then I get a drive like the Toshiba Canvio Basics in the office, and I don't expect much from it. As mentioned above, it's a classic and basic drive. When I benchmark a drive, I ignore the actual results to avoid the temptation of repeating tests to remove irregularities and don't look at them until I'm done testing it. Then when going through the results, adding them to my database, and creating the charts, I make up my mind about the performance and see where it lays in comparison. Usually, it's right where I expect it to be, but not this time. Toshiba's Canvio Basics handles sequential data really well and above expectations. Even more so when we consider the fact that it is a 2.5-inch drive which is inside the Canvio Basics. The random performance isn't as great, but that's also something a drive like this rarely will be used for. You won't run apps or databases from it; you'll be using it as a backup-target or for transporting your data from one place to another. And it does that extremely well, easily beating other USB drives in the charts. If you'll want it in numbers, then it's about 15 to 20 percent faster than other similar drives previously tested. Now that's impressive! Pros Ready to use out of the box and properly aligned (NTFS) USB 3.0 with an impressive performance for its size Bus-powered Matte-black finish which feels and looks good. Cons Not as good a performer with random read and write operations as it is with sequential "Toshiba's Canvio Basics 2TB performs above the norm for 2.5-inch drives and won't break any budgets when you purchase it!" Thank you, Toshiba, for providing us with this sample