Toshiba has not necessarily been a top contender in the consumer digital storage market, but the advent of the smartly-designed Toshiba Canvio Portable demonstrates the ability of the electronics giant to effectively appeal to a diverse range of "digital comfort levels" among consumers. Although the drive is glaringly lacking in certain aspects, the Canvio Portable is still a relatively well-rounded and accessible portable hard drive.

This USB hard drive offers basic plug-and-play connectivity; users simply plug the drive into any Windows machine (it is unfortunately not compatible with Mac OS) and can begin transferring data through the USB 2.0 interface. Lacking USB 3.0 support, the drive obviously does not have the fastest transfer speeds we've seen, so users seeking top speed or planning to transfer relatively large files should look into other top portable hard drives that are equipped with the latest USB interface. One thing we did like about this particular drive is it comes in a wide scale of storage capacities, from 320 gigabytes (GB) to 1 terabyte (TB), which holds an astounding 1024GB.

With regards to physical design, the Canvio hard drive does not offer anything we haven't seen before, but users will appreciate its bus-powered operation and lightweight portability. We would have liked to see a more durable casing; the external drive is plastic, and while that is not necessarily unique to this drive, the plastic seems to lack the sturdiness of more solid materials such as aluminum or rubber. Additionally, the glossy surface is highly susceptible to fingerprints and smears.

Akin to other top-notch portable hard drives, the Canvio comes preloaded with backup software. Toshiba says the drive was designed with the intent to make PC backup easy and convenient, and the simplicity of both the drive and the included software seem to adequately accomplish that objective. The application boasts "set-it-forget-it" functionality that enables users to simply select files and schedule automated, incremental backups to take place. The software, however, isn't entirely bare-bones; it surprisingly also offers more advanced, customizable options apt for tech-savvy users. For instance, there is an advanced restore option used to retrieve lost files, an overwrite functionality and the ability to back up an entire system.

We were pleased to find Toshiba offers technical support via both email and telephone (noteably free of charge). Not so impressive was the lack of resources on the manufacturer's website. There is a list of frequently asked questions, but they are more general FAQs and there are not really any resources specific to the Canvio portable drive.