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Toshiba USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive review: Toshiba USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive
Toshiba USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive
Joseph Kaminski
Senior Associate Technology Editor / Reviews
When not juggling the dual demands of parenthood and playing basketball, Joseph is a life-long Manhattanite who can be found testing the latest tech in the CNET Labs and developing new benchmarks and testing methodologies.
Editors' note: The final rating of this review has been updated to reflect a discrepancy in calculation. None of the individual scores have changed.
Toshiba USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
The $180 320GB Toshiba USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive (HDDR320E03X) is the second drive from Toshiba we've reviewed bearing the Toshiba USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive name. The design has been updated in this new version, but unfortunately, the performance remains just as uninspiring as the original's. Its 320GB capacity offers plenty of room for photos, music, and videos, and its convenient size lets you stow it in a jacket pocket. However, unless you really like its design, we can't recommend this drive because you can find faster models with similar capacities for less.
The small, sleek, lightweight device is not much larger or heavier than an iPod Touch at 0.65 inch high, 3.2 inches wide, 5 inches deep, and weighing just under half a pound. All of the accessories you need come in the packaging, including a USB cable, backup software, warranty information, and a quick install guide. The only thing we wish it had is a FireWire port. Color options include Gecko Green, Hot Rod Red, and Carbon Grey, and Toshiba also offers 160GB and 250GB models, in addition to the 320GB version.
| Drive type | External hard drive |
| Connector options | USB 2.0 |
| Available capacities | 120GB, 250GB, 320GB |
| Capacity of test unit | 320GB |
| Drive size | 2.5-inch |
| Drive speed | 5,400rpm |
| Cache | 8MB |
| Dimensions (HWD) | 0.65x3.2x5 inches |
| OS's supported | Windows Vista, Windows XP, Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later |
| Software included | NTI Shadow Backup Software |
As is common with other portable hard drives, this model has an internal shock sensor to help protect your data from low impact drops. Toshiba doesn't specify a height from which the drive could be dropped, so we dropped it from 4 feet onto a hard surface, plugged the drive back in and it worked fine. NTI Shadow backup software also comes preloaded on the drive. Once installed you can schedule automatic backups that run in the background on systems using Windows 2000, XP, or, Vista and on Macs with OS X 10.3.9 or later.
At its list price of $80 for the 320GB HDDR320E03X model, Toshiba ends up charging you about $0.56 per GB. That's actually a tie for first with the SimpleTech Signature Mini and the =" hard-drives="" maxtor-onetouch-4-mini="" 4505-3186_7-32624543.html"="">Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini. You can find all of those drives for less than their listed prices, so in real world terms the cost per gigabyte is actually even a bit better than that.
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
 | Read | | Write |
On the CNET Labs' test bench, the Toshiba had very good read speeds, but horrendous write speeds, as you can see from our test results. Compared with the well-balanced SimpleTech drive, which offers the same amount of storage for the dollar, that performance gap makes it impossible to recommend the Toshiba.
The Toshiba USB External hard drive comes with a limited three-year warranty available within the United States, United States Territories, and Puerto Rico. Toshiba has a technical support line for storage available weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (Pacific Time). You can also find FAQs and other help on Toshiba's Web site.