Toshiba Canvio Basics 4TB Portable External Hard Drive USB 3.0, Black - HDTB440XK3CA

I purchased this to save my recorded programs/movies from my Dishnet Hopper 3. Worked great. I wasn't clear if it came with a usb or not, so I purchased one... DON'T.... It comes with one that works perfectly. I keep it hooked up to the hopper, so the nice short cord is useful... (about 1 ft). If you need a longer one, then perhaps you'll want to purchase one - but not necessary otherwise. It was super easy - plugged it in, a box came up on my TV that asked if I wanted to update and format - I clicked yes and that was it. It was ready for transfer of saved material. The drive itself is approx 5:x4"x 3/4". It is black and has a little flashing light when it's being used. I had things sorted on my Hopper in "files". So far, I cannot figure out how to make folders on the hard drive, so everything is just mixed on the hard drive - that means looking thru about 200 titles - Eh - but the point of the hard drive for us is to save the content if we have to replace the Hopper at some point. It is easy to move the files back and forth.. And you can play the movies from the hard drive. It did take quite a while to transfer, we had about 50% of our Hopper memory - a number of hours. But no biggee to me. So far, I am happy with my purchase, however, time will tell. Having said that, I never hesitate to update my reviews should new info seem useful.

So far I have been pleased with all 3 of these I have bought. I was at first scared by the negative reviews, but after carefully making sure I reformat them BEFORE using, I have had NO issues. I use these smaller 2TB models, because they are more stable for long term storage than the larger models. And it takes much longer to do maintenance on them with tools like Spinrite, or Gparted when they are in a larger size. I am a former Sysadmin, and I use these for a lot of data. I have 2 older ones that are from 2012 now, and all 5 of these are doing well so far. I use them primarily for video and audio storage/playback. I would recommend that you throw away the OEM cable, and immediately purchase a dual USB harness cable. One of the main issues with these not working right (other than making sure you reformat out of the box), is these USB 3 drives need a lot of power. If you hear them whir up and go click repeatedly, you aren't feeding them enough power. These Y cables have 2 male USB plugs, one has a smaller diameter cable. This is for the extra power, the fatter one is the data cable, don't get these mixed up. Make sure the data one is plugged into your MAIN USB chain directly from the motherboard (usually in the back of PC's), not the front, as these do not have the throughput needed to handle them. Make sure your device handles USB 3, add a card if possible if they don't. If on a laptop, make sure to use the set that has 1 side by side USB sockets, not the single, that is meant for a mouse. You can use an external batter power supply, but it will kill it rather fast. You can use a clean transformer power source (5VDC 1.5-2 Ah), just remember to plug in the drive, BEFORE connecting it to your computer or device. I have not tested these with NAS or DMP's yet, but make sure you follow the manufacturers suggestions on when to connect or how to boot. Some of the earlier Cisco DMP's will wipe the drive if you do not do it exactly as suggested. Some devices, like PS3/4, etc require it to be formatted in FAT32, and to have a specifically name folder layout for your movies and photographs, make sure you follow this. Otherwise most problems I read on here are probably user error. Not all, but most. Nothing is perfect. But so far I have had no problem with this brand and type of drive.

I bought this 2T portable hard drive to back up my 6-year-old desktop computer before I take it into the shop for repairs. I ran into some of the same issues mentioned in the one-star reviews, but I am convinced those were not the fault of the Toshiba drive. To start, it was easy to attach the drive to my computer with the included cable, and my computer recognized it right away. However, it may have been because I am running Windows 10, or because I had to attach the cable to a USB 2.0 port, or because the Toshiba drive is formatted as NTFS and my system drive (C:) is formatted as FAT32, but the Windows backup software was convinced that the Toshiba drive was corrupted and would not write to it. At one point it looked like it had, but the folders on the Toshiba drive were all empty. I was going to reformat the Toshiba drive as a FAT32 to see if that would solve the problem, but I am always afraid I will inadvertently wipe out the wrong thing when I format a drive, so I chickened out and used File Explorer to send copies of my folders (Documents, Photos, Music, etc.) to the Toshiba drive instead. They wrote to the drive with no problem, although it did take over an hour to copy my 14,961 photos. I have confirmed that the files are there and I can open them, so I think the drive is fine, it was just an issue of compatibility with an older computer. I like this drive and its small size a lot--it's smaller than my phone--so I am strongly tempted to use something else for future backups and to add the Toshiba drive to my laptop bag.

Great product, works as intended with no flaws.

I bought this product because of my PS5 console, I wasn’t able to download most of my games so I got this and it’s very portable and sleek, my only issues is powering it down properly since it can still be running a little after the console is shutdown. But it’s never had any issues repairing itself or downloading to it and it’s pretty fast too! All and all this is a great storage for a ps4 since you can’t download ps5 games directly too the storage but can with ps4 games, instead you have to download your game first then transfer it to the storage but I have no issue with this seeing that my internet is fast.