Toshiba has been an established and well-renowned technology brand for a very long time. And their latest entry to their illustrious portfolio is the Toshiba 2TB External Hard Drive PH3200U-1E3S. Does Toshiba continue its consistent high-level of build quality and performance? There’s only one way to find out.. read on…
Jump to:
– Design and Build
– Size and Weight
– Connectivity
– Storage Space
– Speed/Benchmarks
– What’s inside the Box
– What other buyers are saying
– Accessories
– Conclusion
Design and Build
Toshiba has never been known for their ground-breaking designs, and the Toshiba PH3200U-1E3S is no exception. The design is quite simple and there is hardly anything spectacular to scream about. It sports a metal casing that wraps around the entire side of the drive. It feels very well-built and almost takes away the fear of accidently dropping it. The drive is slightly bulky, but that is not such a big problem as it was designed to support both vertical and horizontal positions – making it quite versatile. One word of caution: The LED is bright, blindingly bright. It feels like it could have been used as a laser weapon in Star Trek and to put kindly, is highly annoying and needs a piece of black electrical tape stuck on it, unless you have a small child afraid of the dark – excellent night light. And at least you can be sure you will know when the drive is busy at work reading/writing data. Luckily, on the noise side it barely whispers. It does not have any fans yet remains cool thanks to the clever metal placement that disperses the heat quite effectively.
Size and Weight
As previously mentioned the drive is slightly bulky which may not be to everyone’s taste. But if you plan to leave the drive on a big desk for all eternity, you won’t mind. However, if you plan to move it around frequently, perhaps a lighter and more portable drive would be recommended. (If this is the case, you might be interested in our review of the Western Digital My Passport).
The hard drive’s dimensions are (W x D x H) 7.6 x 1.4 x 4.8 inches. And weighs approximately 2.2 pounds.
Connectivity
The drive has a built-In USB 3.0 interface that dramatically improves the speed at which you can transfer all your large files and create backups. All USB 3.0 drives are compatible with USB 2.0 computers, but in order to get the top speed you need to have a USB 3.0 compatible system. The drive is very simple and only requires two connections – The USB 3.0 one and a standard power cable. The power cable provided is quite short though. Ensure you have a plug near your system.
Storage Space
This particular version of the drive has a galactic 2 terabytes of storage space, which equates to roughly 570,000 photos or; 525,000 mp3s, or; 1600 movies. Truly huge size and accompanied with the USB 3.0 bullet-speeds, you will have all your data safely backed up in no time.
We are all used to having our hard drives come with pre-installed software on them. This Toshiba external hard drive is an exception to the rule. It comes completely blank and ready for use. You will be up and running after plugging it in, in under 1 minute. It is that simple – Great stuff!
Speed/Benchmarks
As this is a drive from Toshiba we were expecting solid results; and that is exactly what we got. We got consistent 45 MB/s average write speeds with single big video files. As expected this number dropped when transferring multiple files, but still consistently remained above the average speed.
What comes inside the box?
Inside the box you will get:
1x Toshiba 2TB External Hard Drive
1x Stand for vertical positioning
1x Power Cord
1x USB 3.0
1x Installation guide
3-year warranty
Accessories
This drive is very well constructed and a protective case doesn’t seem very necessary. The only accessory an owner of this drive would be an extension of the warranty. SquareTrade offer 2, 3 and 5 year electronics warranty extension through amazon. They are quite cheap as well, so for those interested you should visit Amazon to inform yourself of what the extra warranty would cover.
Conclusion
Pros
- USB 3.0 means the drive runs at super speeds
- This drive should appear in the dictionary under ‘Plug-and-play’
- No pre-installed software to worry about
- Excellent hard drive to keep all your data backed up
- Surprisingly silent and cold
Cons
- Blindingly bright LED light is a minor problem. Can be easily fixed though.
