Toshiba 1TB Canvio Basics Portable External Hard Drive,USB
Toshiba 1TB Canvio Basics Portable External Hard Drive,USB 3.0 Gen 1, Black (HDTB410EK3AA)
HIGH TRANSFER SPEEDS
Powered by USB 3.2 Gen 1 technology, these portable hard drives are much faster than – but still compatible with – USB 2.0 devices, allowing for speedy transfer when organising your files.
YOUR DATA IN SAFE HANDS
With over 50 years of experience in hard drive technology and unrivalled quality standards, Toshiba portable hard drives provide a reliable and secure place for your files, wherever you go.
EASY PLUG-AND-PLAY OPERATION
Simple plug-and-play operation. Ready to use with Microsoft Windows and no software installation required. Intuitively drag and drop files to and from your PC or laptop.
 |  |  |  | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capacities | 4 TB | 2 TB | 1TB | 4 TB | 2 TB | 1TB | 2 TB | 1TB | 4 TB | 2 TB | 1TB |
| Casing | Elegant Silver Finish | Sleek Black Finish | Aluminium Finish | Matte Finish |
| Colour | silver | black | silver, black | black |
| Windows Compatible | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Mac Compatible | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Tablet Compatible | ✓ | |||
| Game console compatible | ✓ | |||
| USB-A cable | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| USB-C cable | ✓ | |||
| Auto-backup software & password protection | ✓ |
| Weight: | 149 g |
| Dimensions: | 10.9 x 7.8 x 1.4 cm; 149.01 Grams |
| Brand: | Toshiba |
| Model: | 4041K11 |
| Colour: | Black |
| Batteries Included: | No |
| Manufacture: | Toshiba |
| Dimensions: | 10.9 x 7.8 x 1.4 cm; 149.01 Grams |
Working like a champ, as mentioned in other reviews the speed is around 130-140MB/s.
Bear in mind this is a mechanical drive, not SSD – if you want big storage for a low price that’s still the best way to go. Just don’t bang it around would be my advice.
Seen a few people complain their stopped working or frequently disconnected. Hasn’t happened to me yet, I’d just advise to ensure that your USB port is providing enough power for this – a laptop (especially on battery) may struggle to keep this running. A powered USB hub might help in those situations.
Worth the money, imo.
Reliability is the topmost requirement when it comes to storage and backing up; and I’m pleased to say that I’ve never experienced any issues with these hard drives. They’re reasonably priced for the storage capacity and lightweight too, so all the boxes are ticked.
I am delighted with this Drive. relative to the storage that it contains it is quite small, but yet sturdy.. When used to copy information from the server, it is very quick and it is then easy to exit the information on any other machine with a USB port. Fully met by requirements.
Already set up when I plugged it into my PC. Only concern was when I received it, the package was taped in half covering the rip in the packaging. The packet that held the hard drive was in fine condition though.
I’ve been paying for iCloud storage for as long as I can remember and with travelling abroad and going to concerts, my phone storage as well as my iCloud storage just collapses. Using this external hard drive, I transferred all of my travelling and concert photos and videos and managed to save lots of storage on my phone and iCloud.
The external hard drive DID indeed come with 2TB of storage (as I’ve seen some reviews on other external hard drive reviews, that their hard drive came with significantly less storage.) All in all, so far so good!
Arrived today, just started to use it with a back up. So far so good. But I am a bit puzzled. The description on here, states it’s a solid state drive, but there’s nothing on the box or leaflets that back that up. I’m using it now and it’s vibrating slightly, the same way a HDD external drive does. So is it SSD, or HDD?
Got this for my sons ps4 and it does the job perfectly he can play his TSW4 now without it crashing and getting a code, he’s very happy it’s brilliant and it’s a name you can trus
Exactly as it says. Compared to cheaper ones I have bought in the past this one is still going strong without and issues so far. With hard drives you definitely get what you pay for but this is reasonable and reliable.
So far this has done exactlly what it said it would. Esasy to connect and easy to drag and drop files. Just what I was looking for. Also works on HP Chromebook 360.
The simplicity of using this drive and downloading the content from my old hard drive was so simple and easy. A winner for someone, like me, who isn’t terribly tech savvy. Highlight recommended.
Great value and has earned it’s keep already when I had to reinstall a disk image backup. Using a local computer company would have cost more than the price of this device. I would still have to install all my own software if I went down this route.
I used one of these drives for my Xbox One for over 4 years and it was totally reliable. So when my son wanted one for his Xbox Series S
I recommended this 1tb drive. Does the job without any problems and was a great price.
It is a plug and use product with no set up needed. The transfer speeds are very quick and reliable, I run majority of my Xbox games through it.
If you are planning on using this hard drive on Next Gen Consoles, it can not run “optimised for xbox series s/x games” but you can still store those games on it!
Perfect for the price!
Amazing drive for how quick it is.
Rare to have such a large SSD for so cheap.
Perfect for all your external storage needs, and so easy to plug and go in every machine.
I back up regularly and prefer 1TB drives for a number of reasons, mainly that with larger drives a failure means losing more.
I’ve always used Seagate drives but find the connection plugs and sockets wear which mean they become flaky to connect eventually. The Toshiba seems more secure at the moment and the lead seems to make the Seagates better behaved, maybe I should just but a couple of new leads?
Whatever, I’m happy at the moment.
Everything you want, pretty good, speeds are good, fast, No problem. The only problem with harddrives these days are things have really shot up in price. I’ve bought a few 15 or 20 cheap ones and ended up on refunds because they were absolute trash/corrupt/broken/slow. Unfortunately money does matter when buying these types of products. Don’t go super cheap.
I’ve tried this a couple of times now for transferring my photos onto. It was easy to use out of the box, and works as I’d hoped and expected it to so far. Strange end on the cable. It’s not a standard one where by you’d be able to replace it with just a universal cable. Good overall
Great hard drive, nice n compact easy to install just plug in and away you go, drag files over to it.
I use for my fire stick when you put it into the firestick using a splitter will ask to use as external hard drive so you can just unplug it and plug into pc to drag files movies or music over to it, or use as 2nd storage device but you can’t unplug and use in anything else but the fire stick but when you install apps will install on this.
Also as the last picture shows, being as it is 1TB of space, it is going to take some (years) to even get half full.
Installed on my new LG smart tv and it’s recording the programs great – just told the tv I wanted to record and it automatically set it up for me
Used the same model on tv a while back. Plugged this one into mac formatted it in two mins and hey presto started moving files around. These are ideal for both tv and computer.
Ideal replacement for my previous generation Toshiba hard drive which worked for over 10 years before experiencing an issue. I was still able to transfer my files from the old one too so pretty pleased with the life of Toshiba products.
When can you ever have too much storage when you make video files and need back-ups? Which to pick? I opt for external hard drives as well as online storage as each has its good and less so points…
This drive arrived in perfect working condition and was easy to attach and use on my HP Windows 10 laptop. I might buy another one… after all just one back up copy is probably not sufficient… at least until I can afford an SSD version!
It is excruciatingly slow, though – might be fine for small, day to day, back ups but when I wanted to transfer about 500g from another drive, it was predicted to take about 10 days!
I think this is the 3rd portable hard drive I’ve obtained from Toshiba, I can’t fault anything with these really, it’s a pocket sized storage device, just a simple plug in and start downloading your music files and photographs, etc. The only caveat is that it’s only a 3.0 USB, and not a 3.2, but, that doesn’t detract significantly from its performance. Storage capacity of 931GB to play with which is ample for what I want it for, another excellent acquisition at a fraction of the price from year’s ago, simple to use and the Toshiba name to fall back on, what’s not too like.
Just plug it in to you laptop and off you go. Easy.
I was expecting it to be painfully slow and take days, but not at all. It took about 4 hours (or a bit less), probably an average of about 65MB/s. (Using Windows 10 and a USB 3 port).
They call this drive Canvio Basics, I dont know what is basic about it, its a 2.5inch HDD like any other.
was my first time buying something like this so i was very unsure but it matched my expectations! everything works well (been using for just over 2 months now) and has great storage! a lot lighter in weight than expected so great for portability
Major backup from laptop. Product recommended by brilliant local computer ‘boffin’. Couldn’t have been easier to use with his help but not much info on usage included with product.
Does it have enough memory and will it keep my files secure, without losing them?
I have had this product for several months and it meets my criteria perfectly.
It doesn’t feel as sturdy as some, but is working great so far.
Excellent for the price and easy to install and use.
Nice and small so you can’t see under the tv
Tested drives out (2) as basic drag and drop and worked fine.
There are 2 pdf help files on the drives when you open them, but both files are locked and cant be opened even with full admin rights so whatever they are they are useless.
Maybe same documents on line (but not tried to find yet) that let you know if you can set any backup settings, only saving new/updated files etc and until then they are drag and drop only.
As external drives they are small and portable and the boxes they come in are fine for keeping them in.
Slightly less than 1tb but arent all IT products that claim to br something they are never quite there.
Overall did what I wanted but may not be able to do more advanced back ups if that is what you need.
i am told not to rely on it beyond 5 years – then data will be lost.
I got it for storing and consolidating sound samples for music making from various flash drives I have dotted around the house. Although flash drives are generally reliable (especially the SanDisk ones I normally use — please see my separate reviews) I still like to have back ups so it was time to back up everything and have it all handily in one place, and this Toshiba Canvio Partner 4TB Portable 2.5″ External HDD is perfect for the job. I absolutely couldn’t be happier with my purchase.
Speed-wise it’s great for what I need it for. It’s fast; very fast, and is the fastest drive I own (with file transfer speeds often reaching 130 MB/s [about 1.30 minutes to copy about 10 GB of data]). However, different files, quantities and sizes tend to copy at different speeds, which seems to be how Windows operates, rather than the device itself. Some of my files whizz onto the drive while others take a little longer, but the time factor isn’t an issue with me as I just leave the copying process running while I do other things on my computer. This doesn’t affect the copying so I’m happy to leave it running for as long as it needs. Maybe alternative models will transfer a little faster and maybe they won’t, but as far as I’m concerned the speed of this one is more than adequate. To put a figure on it to give an idea of averages, a folder full of sound samples can copy between 70 MB/s to 110 MB/s, but a good folder of more even files can copy at a steady 110 MB/s to 120 MB/s. Please note the word ‘copy’ in the above as this is the function I use the drive for, and as such I haven’t tried moving files (which may transfer faster).
I invariably copy from USB 3.0 devices and as this is USB 3.2 the process is quick, but even on slower drives and SD cards it still isn’t much of a bother. As above, I just set it up and leave it, as what’s an extra bit of time here and there?
Once the bulk of the copying is done all I need to do is back up newer files as I create or acquire them, which is a breeze. The smaller size (10.9 x 1.95 x 7.8 cm — probably little more than an average laptop touchpad) and USB connection are great because now I can keep the drive in a little cupboard next to where I work so can quickly and without fuss hook it up to the computer whenever I need it, and then disconnect it and put it away just as quickly. Not having to plug it into the mains like my old external hard drives is definitely a plus.
Copying couldn’t be easier either as it works straight out of the box (bar formatting it to NTFS, which is seconds with the Windows Quick Format command) and is drag and drop. Straight out of the box means there’s no drivers to install (certainly not on Windows 10 as I use). As such, it’s a case of plug it in and then within seconds it’s ready to use (and you can’t get quicker than that!).
The only downside (which isn’t really a downside, but merely common sense when using a mechanical drive) is that it probably shouldn’t be moved while copying. Saying that, I have had to move mine a couple of times, but have done so with utmost care and it seems to be okay.
Regarding storage, it’s plentiful to say the least. I have thousands of samples of varying lengths and qualities (of which a total I couldn’t possible guess at, but it has to be well over 100,000, and probably considerably more — probably a good few 100,000) but they’ve all gone onto the drive, as well as plenty of associated files, software back ups and all the music I’ve created. And according to the drive, I haven’t even reached 2TB, so with 4TB capacity there’s more than enough left over for any amount of adding to. 2TB is massive storage, and 4TB doubles it, so it’ll take some filling unless one really crams it with massive files.
I can’t comment on reliability as I’ve only recently bought the drive, but Toshiba is usually fairly reliable and seems to have a good name for itself. I’m sure it’ll last. Saying that, the drive is used on a near daily basis and works perfectly every time.
Please be aware that no matter what capacity a drive is, when plugged into Windows the operating system invariably shows it as having less capacity than advertised, which seems to be just how Windows measures capacity compared to the manufacturer. It isn’t indicative of a faulty drive or false advertising, and seems to be the same with any drive plugged into Windows.
Please note too that no software comes with the drive, and that the instructions are in .pdf format on the drive itself.
Also, as with most connected storage devices, it’s highly recommended that instead of just plugging them out when finished, Windows’ Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media feature is used instead to save data being corrupted if the drive is still being written too. This can normally be found in the taskbar beside the notification area. There may be a small delay until Windows indicates it’s safe to remove the drive, but its usually not too long. This drive follows that convention too.
So, an all round excellent purchase which I’m delighted with, and at a good price too. There’s simply nothing negative I can say about this drive, and can safely say from my own experiences with it that it’s entirely positive. As such, due to its many advantages I highly recommend it.
Internal packaging by Toshiba is the reasonable inflated bubble wrap. The USB3 cable was folded up 4 times and as a result has 4 kinks in it, 2 of which are pretty brutal. The drive socket wasn’t completely firm, a small bit of play was felt inserting and removing the cable. A bit more research revealed this type of socket is usually soldered to the drive’s board and looking at the size of the drive (a footprint slightly SMALLER than a 50g tobacco tin!) it’s very likely this socket is soldered to the drive, so if you’re thinking you can remove the case if it fails at a later date and stick the drive in another case or computer, think again. This alone is why I removed a star. If the socket fails, a new one typically costs a fiver and that’s before you learn to solder or pay someone else to do it. I’ll probably wrap some tape around the end of the drive to limit the cable movement too but that’s just me being paranoid, since during a file transfer to the Toshiba external drive, one of my internal drives kicked out a couple of Command Timeout errors in the SMART readout, something I’ve never seen in 18 months of owning my system. A thorough geek-esque system check revealed the Toshiba was totally blame-free 🙂
CrystalDiskMark & CrystalDiskInfo reveal more information. According to CDI, the drive is a SATA II drive. Not really an issue since USB3 speeds on my laptop max out around 130MB/s but is it really a SATA II? I hope it’s not an old drive inside, I haven’t seen anything but SATA III and NVMe in years. Still, CDM speed tests were pretty much what I hoped for – at best 131MB/s writing a 1GB file, 130MB/s writing and reading a 2GB file (I ran this test several times). SMART codes seemed perfectly normal at this point. Most of the time the speed hovered between 120-130MB/s whilst writing large files, occasionally it would drop to 80-90MB/s. A large folder of image files gave the typical snails pace you get from a HDD. All files transferred ok, although I discovered the transferred folder (42.2GB) was 5MB smaller than the source, despite being identical file systems (right down to cluster and sector size, on NTFS). No files are missing… Never seen that before in an identical setup but during the backups, I had a lot of “firsts” (and in 26 years of computing, I just wanted to put it down to my age lol).
Finally, the reason for the packaging comment at the start. During tests, I noticed the “Disk Shift” SMART output changing a few times. Exhaustive reading threw out several possibilities, not least one being external force – a package being tossed around, for example. I’ve had parcels from here that looked like they’d been kicked about. It’s unacceptable and it likely reduces the lifespan of most sensitive devices. Idling, the Disk Shift output returns to zero. Whilst active, I’ve seen values from 1 up to 22, 14 has appeared a few times. It seems like the drive is shifting when running at full speed but no other errors have emerged yet.
Phew. Lastly, The auto power-off (1min or so) is a little annoying but considering how hot it gets (45C from 25C after a 10 minute file transfer) it’s probably a good thing. Also, yesterday this drive was cheaper than the Seagate/Maxtor equivalents, today they’re the same price – Something to bear in mind if, like me, you were comparing several drives and cost was a deciding factor. The drive seems to be exactly what it would be, great size, plenty of care needed to keep it in working condition but always treat your external drives with great care regardless. 1TB of course will show as approx 931GB in Windows. I run a dual-boot system (Win/Linux) and the drive works fine in both operating systems. Would I trust it with critical data? I don’t know yet.