Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

As of June 2010, this Toshiba is the best value for money amongst 1 Tb portable hard drives. The competition includes Western Digital My Passport SE for Mac 1 TB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive WDBABW0010BSL-NESN (Silver) and Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1 TB Ultra-Portable External Hard Drive STAA1000100 (Black) both of which are more expensive than Toshiba Canvio. Out of the box, it comes as NTFS formatted drive and works only on Windows computers. It even comes with Windows backup software, which I have not used. For just Mac use, you have to reformat the hard drive as Mac OS Extended (Case Sensitive Journaled). Once reformatted, it works flawlessly as an external drive or Time Machine. Here is the formatting summary: FOR WINDOWS ONLY USE - format as NTFS - the format it comes in. FOR BOTH WINDOWS & MAC USE -format it as MS DOS (FAT 32) but then it does not work as a Time Machine. TO USE AS MAC ONLY & TIME MACHINE - format as Mac OS Extended (Case Sensitive, Journaled) - which does not work in Windows. TO USE FOR MAC TIME MACHINE & WINDOWS - partition the drive using Disk Utility and format one partition as Mac OS Extended (Case Sensitive, Journaled) and other partition as NTFS (Windows 7) or FAT 32 (Windows XP) The drive is big enough that you can partition it and format it anyway and have it all. It is small, sleek, light, quiet and as of June 2010 the biggest capacity portable USB drive. Over the years I have used numerous portable hard drives, most of them Western Digital & Lacie, and they all worked well; only one Fantom hard drive died. This is my first Toshiba hard drive and I have not used this Toshiba Canvio long enough to comment on its longevity but it seems to be functioning well and as of now it is the best value for money. UPDATE (August 18, 2010): As of now, this is the only 1 Tb 2.5 inch drive available out there and it can be taken out of the enclosure to replace the drive in unibody aluminum Macbook Pros. Phillips 00 screwdriver, T6 TORX screwdriver and a sharp knife (or long nails) are the tools you need. All the steps can be discovered by searching h Google or YouTube for "open Canvio" and "clone Mac hard drive". I followed the instructions and video from owmacsales under sparedrive on their web site and did fresh mac OS install. Macinstruct webs site has detailed descriptions of hard drive cloning and YouTube, several videos uploaded by generous folks. MacBook Pro hard drive is slightly thinner than this Canvio, but it fits snugly and the battery cover can be closed. This is the cheapest way to upgrade MacBook Pro (or notebook) hard drive! Inside MacBook Pro, I partitioned this drive: one for Mac OS, one for Bootcamp Windows 7 and third as FAT32 where both can read and write. Canvio is a 5400 RPM drive and I am not sure 7200 RPM, 1 Tb is even available in 2.5 inch drives as of now. The only other internal 2.5 inch 1 Tb drive available as of now, Western Digital 1 TB Scorpio Blue SATA 5200 RPM 8 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Notebook Hard Drive WD10TPVT is 5200 RPM and 12.5 mm and people have said it fits MacBook Pro unibody but is more expensive. It is a little noisier inside the MacBook. UPDATE (10/9/2010): The bigger drive really slows down the Mac OS boot up. On my 320 GB drive the Mac OS boot up time was 1:49 minutes and now on 1 TB drive the Mac OS boot up time is 5:43 minutes! But the drive size does not appear to effect the boot up time for Windows 7, which is 2:17 minutes.