An affordable way to carry your files with you
Available in black, white, red, blue or ‘satin gold’, this shiny portable hard disk is designed to work equally well with Macs and Windows PCs. You’ll need a modern computer to get the best from it, since it uses a USB 3.0 connector (you can normally identify USB 3.0 ports by looking for a blue stripe inside the socket). Plug it into a USB 2.0 port and it will still work, but files will copy across more slowly. No mains power is required.
A short USB 3.0 cable is included in the box, and plugging that into your PC is all you need to do to start using the Canvio Connect II. If you have a Mac, a software driver is included to make OS X read the NTFS file system used by Windows, which the drive comes set up for. Unless you’ll also need to use the drive with a Windows machine, though, you’d be better off using Apple’s Disk Utility app to initialise the drive in the Mac’s preferred Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format, also known as HFS+. It sounds complicated, but only takes a few clicks.
In our tests, the Canvio Connect II 2TB (other capacities are available) was able to read and wrote both small and large files consistently at speeds between 98 and 113 megabytes per second, which is what we’d expect from a USB 3.0 portable drive. Backup software is included, plus a service called PogoPlug, which lets you access your files over the internet provided your PC is switched on. Overall, the £80 asking price is good value for a 2TB drive.
VERDICT
A fast and very reasonably priced external hard disk in a handy portable format.
SPECIFICATIONS
5400rpm 2.5in hard disk • 12ms seek time • 2TB capacity • USB 3.0 port • USB powered • 19.5x78x109mm • 230g