TOSHIBA Canvio Desk 3TB USB 3.0 Desktop External Hard Drive HDWC130XK3J1 Black

Pros: Works as external drive with XP thru Win 8

Cons: There is a little secret you should know. The internal format is secret. The USB controller in this drive fakes the OS into thinking it is an NTFS drive with 4K sectors. Traditionally drives under the 2.2TB limit use 512 byte sectors. XP can read drives larger than 2TB if they are formatted as 4K sectors. The Controller in this device presents the OS as such. If you have a failure of the cheap controller chip, you might think you can crack the case open and put the drive on a sata dock or put it internal to a desktop PC and recover the files. But you will be wrong. Windows will see the drive as an unformatted partition and two unallocated partition. You can't read them because they have a secret format that only the controller chip knows. With a standard gpt or mbr formatted drive, you would have some hope of maybe using a disk data recovery program to get some of the data off the drive by putting it into a desktop or hooking it to a USB to Sata converter or a docking station. So if you loose the cheapo USB controller chip, or it screws up translation, say due to a power glitch, you loose your data. Or you pay the mfgr to recover it. You can't read it with anything but another Toshiba controller. I confirmed this by removing the internal drive in preparation to upgrade the drive. I put the drive into a Mediasonic multidrive box I use for archives and found it would not read it as a gpt (or even MBR) drive. Useless. I believe a lot of reviews saying they have problems reading the disk or have lost data, are due to the translation of disk format by the USB controller, not actually a failed disk drive.

Overall Review: I would suggest for external drives over 2.2TB, avoiding the Toshiba, Seagate and other mfgr external drives if they advertise XP compatibility. Most certainly there is some translation going on in the controller. Instead buy a device that says it doesn't support drives over 2.2TB unless you use GPT. This means not compatible with stock XP. A good example of a device like this would be the Plugable USB3-SATA-UASP1. This device uses GPT formatting and supports devices up to 6TB. Also I have Mediasonic probox usb3 4 disk housings that support up to 4TB. I can confirm that these work great with Win7 and 8.1 and you can remove the drives and put them into your desktop or swap them between units and the data is readable via the USB interfaces.

Pros: Space for extra large files, multiple backups and drive images to save ourselves from system failure. This is a large capacity external with 7200 rpm speed. The three year warranty on externals beats the competition. USB 3 speed and backward compatible to USB 2 (at the USB 2 slower speed). Price is equal to or only slightly more than competing brands with shorter warranties and slower rpm. There is a significant performance boosts for USB 3 at 7200 RPM.

Cons: No on / off button. Skip the included backup software and use something better

Overall Review: I believe cloud storage for backup or file storage is not secure; security breaches are rampant and reported every day. My data dates back over 20 years. I rotate backups between multiple externals and swap a disk every 6 months with another family member. I use Acronis software Most other large capacity external drives are slower at 5900 rpm. Toshiba upped its competitive thrust by offering 3 year warranties as the industry consolidated and reduced warranties to 1 year on low price models. Toshiba demonstrates more confidence in their technology by offering the longer warranty ALL mechanical hard drives are guaranteed to fail whether it be in 8 years, 2 years, 1 year or next month. The 3 year warranty will save replacement costs if a drive fails within the 2nd or 3rd year. It seems short sighted to me if you buy any other brand with slower speed or shorter support Please mark this review as helpful if it is

Pros: Pros: + Works as advertised. + Low cost for a 5TB Drive. + Excellent performance for an external hard drive. + Takes advantage of USB3.0. + Runs cool. and Stays cool. Plenty of vents. + 3 Year warranty. + Compact size for a 3.5 inch form factor. Crystal Disk Mark used with Dell Latitude E6530, i7-3820QM (stock speed) Win8.1 Pro x64, 16GB RAM, USB 3.0 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- CrystalDiskMark 3.0.3 x64 (C) 2007-2013 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- * MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s] Sequential Read : 222.321 MB/s Sequential Write : 218.067 MB/s Random Read 512KB : 69.500 MB/s Random Write 512KB : 126.984 MB/s Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 0.778 MB/s [ 190.1 IOPS] Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 1.920 MB/s [ 468.8 IOPS] Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 0.881 MB/s [ 215.0 IOPS] Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 1.921 MB/s [ 468.9 IOPS] Test : 1000 MB [E: 2.6% (121.7/4657.4 GB)] (x5) Date : 2014/06/12 10:18:35 OS : Windows NT 6.2 [6.2 Build 9200] (x64)

Cons: - Noisier than some other external drives due to a plastic case with vents. - No SATA interface. - No backup button. - USB 3.0 interface can be fragile. - Plastic case will not be welcome to some people.

Overall Review: For the price this drive is great! Exceeds expectations for speed. I like the fact the vents on the drive allow it to run cool during long backup sessions, even if the noise is a little more due to the open vent case design.

Pros: Super large capacity, fast speed (if using USB 3.0). Decent price.

Cons: Enclosure doesn't permit adequate cooling of the hard drive. Internal temperature after being on for 3 hours while transferring files was up to 55 degrees C. I used a 4" fan blowing air towards the lower vent slots to bring the temperature into the low 40s. I was also disappointed that it doesn't have a power switch. I have to unplug it to turn it off. An on-off power switch would've been an expected feature. If it was better ventilated and had a power switch it would've been 5 eggs from me.

Pros: Any pros are negated by the impending failures. I know of none which have not failed within 3 years, most fail much sooner.

Cons: As has been said of this HD already with which I concur: "There is a little secret you should know. The internal format is secret. The USB controller in this drive fakes the OS into thinking it is an NTFS drive with 4K sectors. Traditionally drives under the 2.2TB limit use 512 byte sectors. XP can read drives larger than 2TB if they are formatted as 4K sectors. The Controller in this device presents the OS as such. If you have a failure of the cheap controller chip, you might think you can crack the case open and put the drive on a sata dock or put it internal to a desktop PC and recover the files. But you will be wrong. Windows will see the drive as an unformatted partition and two unallocated partition. You can't read them because they have a secret format that only the controller chip knows. With a standard gpt or mbr formatted drive, you would have some hope of maybe using a disk data recovery program to get some of the data off the drive by putting it into a desktop or hooking it to a USB to Sata converter or a docking station. So if you loose the cheapo USB controller chip, or it screws up translation, say due to a power glitch, you loose your data. Or you pay the mfgr to recover it. You can't read it with anything but another Toshiba controller."

Overall Review: Do not purchase at any price unless you wish to lose your data at some point. It is apparently impossible to obtain a new USB controller from Toshiba in or out of a case so that your data is lost for good as it cannot be write by any other.

Pros: I wanted to give a little more info on the drive to help everyone out. This drive runs cool and quiet. CrystalDiskInfo shows the drive as a Hitachi HDS5C3030BLE630. It is difficult to find much info on this drive. But I found a picture of one on E b ay that was pulled from the case. The sticker said both Toshiba and Hitachi on it. It is made in China by Hitachi Global. This gave another number of DT01ABA300. Googling a search for "toshiba dt01aba" and clicking on the X-bit labs link gives better info. It says that the Toshiba DT01ABA hard drives sport Serial ATA 6Gb/s interface, 32MB cache and 1TB platters. I wanted 1TB platters! I was after this drive because it only uses 3 platters and it spins at 5940 RPM! Most other drives use 4 and 5 platters which is more moving parts. This is what I wanted for lower heat in an external enclosure. It is pointless having a 7200 rpm drive running hot in a fanless enclosure, at least in my opinion. When it runs all day, it only hits 37-40 deg C. or around 100 deg F in my 70 deg room. Seagate only makes 7200 rpm drives now so they run hotter especially in an enclosure. This enclosure does spin down the HD after about 10 minutes so if you want to prevent this, just download a nice little utility called NoSleepHD v2.0. It will handle up to 5 HD's. I set it to write file every 5 minutes. You can also hide the program in the system tray and autorun on startup. Ever since Seagate bought samsung HD's out, I thought I'd try this newer technology drive. It's been a month now. So far so good. I am not necessarily an Hitachi fan, but it looks like they are now leaders in the latest technology especially since The FTC ordered Western Digital to handover their 3.5-inch HDD Manufacturing to Toshiba because of Monopoly concerns. Competition is a good thing. We really need some lately in the HDD scene to lower the prices again don't you think?

Cons: The enclosure spins down the HD after about 10 minutes. Just get a nice utility called NoSleepHD v2.0. It will handle up to 5 HD's. I set it to write file every 5 minutes. You can also hide the program in the system tray and autorun on startup. The case also has no power switch.

Overall Review: It runs cool and seems well balanced with very little vibration.

Pros: Inexpensive and fast

Cons: None yet

Overall Review: I bought two of these to use as backup drives. I have filled both of them to capacity about 12 times so far. No complaints. Speed is great, I worry a little about heat in an essentially sealed plastic (insulating) housing.

Pros: Great space/price/speed

Cons: Chatters - loud HD