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Toshiba Stor.E Steel S USB3 500GB review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £84
inc VAT

It’s gorgeous, but looks aren’t everything – there are cheaper and faster alternatives

Toshiba’s sleek looking Stor.E Steel S portable hard disk is, as its name suggests, machined out of stainless steel. It certainly looks stylish and there’s a leather case, so you can protect this external hard drive from scratches and unsightly fingerprints.

Toshiba Stor.E Steel S USB3 500GB

The disk inside is one of Toshiba’s own 2.5in, with an 8MB cache and spinning at 5,400RPM. It achieved large file write speeds of 62.6MB/s and read speeds of 71.8MB/s, which make it one of the slower USB3 disks we’ve seen. Small file speeds weren’t much better, managing 18MB/s writes and 34.8MB/s reads.

Toshiba bundles copies of Nero BackItUp & Burn Essentials and Kwik media with each Steel edition – the former is a straightforward, if a little basic, backup manager that lets you assign files, folders or entire hard disks to be monitored for changes, meaning you’ll always have the latest version saved to removable storage for when you have to leave the house or office. Kwik media is a library and organiser for all your multimedia files, which can edit, then upload photos to Facebook and send videos to YouTube.

Toshiba Stor.E Steel S USB3 500GB

At roughly 16p per gigabyte, you’re mostly paying for the killer looks rather than outright performance. Toshiba also includes one year of data recovery cover, which could be useful if you carry really important data, but if you use the effective backup software bundled with the Seagate Backup Plus Portable 500GB, you could save money and still be protected.

Basic Specifications

Rating ***

Storage

Hard disk Toshiba MK5076GSX
Capacity 500GB
Formatted capacity 465
Price per gigabyte £0.16
Disk size 2.5in
Interface USB3
Power connector USB3 from host
Spindle speed 5400rpm
Cache 8MB
Seek time 8.9ms
Weight 120g
Size 11x76x122mm
Power consumption idle N/A
Power consumption active N/A

Buying Information

Backup software included Nero BackItUp & Burn Essentials
Price £84
Warranty one year RTB
Supplier http://www.harddrivebuyer.co.uk
Details www.toshiba-multimedia.com

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