External Storage Roundup: LaCie, Toshiba, and WD

The diminutive Toshiba Canvio Connect is the smallest of our three external hard drives (it’s a hair thinner and smidge deeper than the WD My Passport Ultra but is otherwise nearly identical in size), and it sports an Apple-like glossy white chassis design with a light gray rim around the edge for better grip. The included USB cable is also white and stretches to about 12 inches.


The drive employs a USB 3.0 interface and offers 750GB of storage capacity. The drive itself has a 5400RPM spindle speed and the unit is compatible with Windows XP/7/8 (the documentation doesn’t mention Vista, but presumably it works on that as well) and Mac OS X Snow Leopard / Lion / Mountain Lion.


It's MSRP is $109.99--same as the LaCie Porsche P9220--but street prices for the 750GB model are as low as $65. We should also mention that the drive comes with a 2-year limited warranty.


As for included software, the Toshiba Canvio Connect includes NTI EZ Backup, Pogoplug PC, and a 30-day free trial of muvee Reveal (which is a video-making and sharing tool).


With Pogoplug, you can set certain files and folders to be remotely accessible from anywhere, easily share files and folders, stream to a mobile device (if the given device is equipped with a Pogoplug app), and back up the data on your mobile device. Pogoplug also offers 10GB of free cloud storage, and the $29.95 Pogoplug PC license comes gratis with the drive.



For NTI EZ Backup, you’ll run through a setup wizard, and after the software scans your system, you’ll be greeted by a screen that lets you choose the type of backup you want to perform, where to save it, how often, and which files and folders to backup.