Sometimes, we live in a world were you have to shuttle data between PCs and Macs. A lot of external hard drives advertise that their drives work great on both PC and Mac. Like it was suppose to.
In a sense, it is true, but normally requires some user intervention to make it really work like format the drive to exFat. Though it is frustrating for a lot of users. In fact, I get quite a number of questions regarding this. How to make your NTFS-formatted Windows external hard drive work with your Mac?
Enter the 1.5TB Canvio® Basics 3.0 Portable Hard Drive (Black).
The portable Toshiba Canvio, as its full product name describes is a 1.5TB drive that actually does what it says it does— work with both PC and Mac seamlessly, and more importantly, plug it in, and it works.
How Canvio lets your Mac talk to Windows partitions
The secret sauce— one that is missing from all the other external drives I’ve tried is a piece of software called Tuxera NTFS.
Tuxera NTFS is the best secret sauce of this one device. I paid US$105 for this drive at Best Buy (according to Best Buy website they are selling this for US$109.99 now). The drive is also available on Amazon. I can tell you, for just the software, it is all very much worth it.
The Toshiba Canvio is formatted right off the box with Microsoft NTFS. That’s the standard file system which comes along every install of Windows. It just so happens that Mac OS X doesn’t write to NTFS, but allows only the ability to read NTFS by default, which is why you get frustrated users.
Tuxera NTFS for Mac solves this problem. Plug the Canvio, and the installer pops up. It is the usual installer that walks you through the setup. So don’t be scared!
On the Mac it will get installed to your System Preferences, so be sure to know your machine’s admin account and password. After that, you can even read and write to your bootcamp drive, if you have it.
Tuxera NTFS is based on the NTFS-3G open source project. If you don’t want to get the Toshiba Canvio, the software can be purchased separately from Tuxera. The price is: PHP 1,369.68.
The thing is, buying the Toshiba Canvio entitles you to this piece of software so it is like getting around US$30 discount off that US$105. Which is really why I did get this drive.
And once the software is installed, works beautifully with other devices.
The look
The drive itself looks sturdy enough. Though, I haven’t dropped this one. Toshiba says it comes with a “built-in shock sensor, and ramp loading technology.” Supposedly to protect your data from drops and similar accidents.
The plastic covering scratches easy. Mine has a lot of character already (which is why I posted product photos instead of real photos). You might want to consider putting it in a pouch if you’re taking this out, a lot.
USB 3.0
The Canvio hard drive itself isn’t different from every other external hard drive. With the sole exception of the cable. Unlike other offerings from say rival companies like Seagate, Western Digital and others, this isn’t your usual fare of micro-USB on one end, and standard USB on the other. So if you do lose this one, you could be hard pressed to find a replacement cable.
The drive though, is USB 3.0, so you would love the speed (well, if your Mac is USB 3.0 already), but it is compatible with USB 2.0 ports.
I’ve already installed my iPhoto library on this, and I can’t notice any speed difference between having it on the external drive or on my Mac’s.
Great hard disk, great price
I’ve had this drive since November 2012. So far so good. One of the best bargain I’ve seen, and it all comes with a three year, limited warranty.
Photos via Amazon
Screenshots by author, some rights reserved.
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