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The new Toshiba Canvio Advance 4TB drive joins Toshiba's extensive range of pocket sized external drives which currently comprises six drive families in three ranges; Standard (Cancio Basics and Ready), Pro (Canvio Premium) and Advanced (Canvio Advance, Alu and Connect II). There's also a Canvio For Desktop model for good measure as well.
With so many options it does tend to get a little confusing so to help clear things up a little, here are the differences between the drive ranges. Starting at the entry Standard range, the Basics and Ready drives both have 500GB 1TB, 2TB,2.5TB, 3TB 4TB capacity options and no backup/security software support. The Basics has a matt finish enclosure while the Ready has a smart dot patterned finish.
The Canvio Premium, currently the sole Pro range drive, comes in 1TB, 2TB, 3TB, 4TB capacities, has backup and password software support via downloads and comes with a USB Type-C adapter (Type-A to -C) to go with the bundled USB 3.0 cable. The Premium has an aluminium casing.
In the Advanced range, the Alu is another aluminium cased unit with 500GB, 1TB, 2TB capacity options and backup and password software support via download. The Canvio Advanced also has backup and password software support via download but comes in larger 1TB, 2TB, 3TB and now 4TB capacities. The enclosures for the Advance range have a gloss piano finish with five colour options.
Finally the Connect II is the only drive that comes with software pre-loaded (NTI Backup Now EZ & Tuxera NTFS for Mac driver software). It comes in 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, 2.5TB and 3TB capacities and like the Advance has a choice of five colour options for the gloss piano finish.
The 4TB Advance looks good in its high-gloss finish but the downside of such a finish is that it is a finger print magnet and the drive can soon appear a bit grubby. As we mentioned above there are two utilities you can download from Toshiba’s website for the drive. Toshiba Storage Backup Software makes backing of data as easy as possible. You can choose individual files or folders and set up when you want to the backup to happen. Storage Security Software allows the setting up of a unique password to protect your data.
While a 4TB drive is a welcome addition to the Canvio Advanced range, what the range really needs to keep up with the opposition is a USB 3.1 or even a SSD based Canvio drive.
We found the 4TB Canvio Advanced available from Insight for £100.99 (inc VAT) HERE
Pros.
- 4TB of storage in your pocket.
Cons.
- The provided USB 3.0 cable could be a bit longer for PC use.
- Not the fastest external drive we've seen.
KitGuru says: The latest addition to the Canvio Advanced range offers yet more capacity to the range, it’s just not the fastest external drive we’ve ever seen.
