3Tb for less than £25 per TB and a Toshiba whats not to like :smile:

And easy local collection , nice find OP :sunglasses:

Toshiba

Superb drives.

There's plenty of black and blue ones. There's even a few white ones in Manchester if you look hard enough.

Top tip: Gran & Gramps!

Why not back up all your photos on this nice cheap hard drive?!!

You know, in case someone pinches your PC or it goes phut in the night.

Just what I'm after, thanks OP. Managed to reserve a blue one to collect this afternoon from a nearby store.

For those struggling with stock, make sure you check the different colour versions.

Picked mine up and got a £5 voucher too because of an over £50 spend.

Would anyone advise for or against a write zeros test? Will take an age and build heat but think It's the thoroughest test going?.

Has anyone purchased this? can you deleted all that remote software off and use it just as an external drive?

great deal by the way! amazing price

can this be taken out of the enclosure and used in the laptop?

​yep, found that out yesterday so this really was perfectly timed!

Dude that's a bargain. I recommend you state it's USB 3.0 in the description. Heat added!

Most technology illiterate people won't be aware of this though, they'll just think because they've got an external hard drive back up that they keep in their desk draw within 6 inches of their PC they're golden. In reality they are not really in any better position.

Especially the ones that leave external drives plugged into their desktop 24/7 (yes, I have witnessed this first hand).

Who are you talking to ?

Excellent find OP. Heat added :smile:

ebay link please.. also will I get 5 quid voucher for spending over £50?

Writing zeros is unnecessary on a new drive, that is more for secure data destruction. A 'full' test with decent diagnostic utility is fine. I recommend one or all of the following: Western digital data lifeguard (works on all drives not just WD), Minitool partition wizard, Crystaldiskinfo and several others are also fine

Effective cost £59.99 - brilliant!

Do you have a link? I can't find it :disappointed:
Thanks in advance.

OK Ta. I've used the WD stuff before so will look at that first.

ps4 compatible?

Good find OP, been after a replacement external HDD for a while now. Heat added!

No probs.
Western digital data lifeguard version 1.29 is the latest and you can download it here:
support.wdc.com/dow…=en

Be prepared for several hours to complete full test.

Is the Xbox One compatible? oO

None available for home delivery or to collect in or around Nottingham :disappointed:

no built in wifi with these, simply a usb drive with software to access when on a network.

2tb only 49.99!! I know it's only effectively £10 more for 3tb (with free £5 voucher) but it's still a bargain!

Try a different colour if oos locally !

Not you so kindly buzz

​yes.....

The Superhub's USB port is deactivated. You can draw power but no use for it as of yet. Get a third-party router with a USB or just get a NAS.

I hate what drugs do to people.

got one cheers OP heat added.........

just reserved one at alfreton

Another smashing argos deal that is available in Mars only....wasting of time with argos

No either physically to big or impossible as the hdd will be fused to the usb board.

Yes

copy the name into the argos search bar, there are others. found a few in ilkeston

Thanks - ordered a blue one for collection from Castleford

External hard drives are not a backup solution.

The drive packets are flashes with "+10Gb of Cloud Storage" - probably an offer for a year is how it usually works...maybe one of the early purchasers can tell us?

Out of stock all stores in Ayrshire :(:(:(

Format it and it's an empty drive.



I've never seen an external HDD actually fused to the housing, what would be the purpose?

Well they are to an extent. They have a copy of their data that remains untouched if an undesired deletion or edit occurs, for example. There's lots of examples where a simple external HDD is a good thing. You have to weigh up each case.

Out of stock all stores in Ayrshire :(:(:(

why not?

Hot! been waiting to pick up an external for quite a while...just in time to free up some space and finally upgrade to windows 10 :smile:

As for those not finding stock, try other colours - seems to be black and blue at a few around London

Not so I purchased the blue version for pickup in Kilmarnock about 15 minutes ago ... and it can still be collected:
argos.co.uk/sta…htm

Because:

1) They are just as (if not more) prone to failure as internal hard drives
2) On-Site backups are not backups. What about house fires etc?

If you want proper backups observe the rule of three.

Three copies of anything you care about - Two isn't enough if it's important.
Two different formats - Example: Dropbox+DVDs or Hard Drive+Memory Stick or CD+Crash Plan, or more
One off-site backup - If the house burns down, how will you get your memories back?

Cheers OP was looking for more space. Tempted to buy 2 but saw some bad Toshiba HDD reviews recently so one will do for now.

What is then? Please don't say cloud based...another server which could go tits up!

Who said anything about leaving it in your house?

I think most people would agree that backing up all your photos was a minimal fist good step towards protecting what's important. Most people wouldn't cry too much at the hardware loss if their computer wouldn't start up ever again but they would be very upset to lose important personal memorabilia like photos.

Thanks OP, bought it to back up NAS that I can keep disconnected.

Thanks for posting managed to order early this morning and picked up from store this evening, been on the hunt for one of these for a while now.

It would be better to use a cloud service in that case.

For example Google allows you to store all your photos for free.

Black and blue all out of stock :disappointed:

Absolute bloody joke, not available at any store around my home address, work address, or relative's address. Wild Goose Chase. Great if you get one though.

They said fused to the usb connector, ie no sata connector, as with most 2.5" externals.

Not if you live near Bromley.

Is two really essential? I mean - generally for main critical documents I actually have about 6 copies in 4 locations and 2 formats.

Most valuable thing is photos, but then I have 3 copies of ALL data save system drives with offsite backup but the physical media is the same. (by keeping offsite periodic and verified, I try to mitigate for corruption)

I suppose it will not protect against nuclear war or a massive EMP, but then, in those situations although I will indeed be upset, its probably not my priority... :wink:

I'm not sure that DVDs or memory sticks are practical nor a really affordable / practical option for 8TB and counting :thinking:

Suggestions welcome :grin:

********OUT OF STOCK***********

I beg to differ

Can someone kindly comment and let me know which is better in terms of reliability?

3 TB Seagate Maxtor portable USB-3 or this Toshiba Canvio Connect II Portable Hard Drive


appreciate any help from someone... cheers

thx op... reserved! I've been looking for one for ages. thankyou :grin:

Just reserved one in Black, was going to buy a 2TB for around £65, so good call. Thanks. Heat from me.

:disappointed: i just bought this last week for 74.99 still sealed can i return it or ask for reduced price match? This is out of stock everywhere now

2TB version available for £50 if you don't fancy paying £15 more for that extra 1TB you may never use

I got the Toshiba Canvio Ready 3TB for £69.99 in Argos today since Canvio Connect II OOS. The black design is classy. Looks like it is stock from Germany on the packaging and a 2015 model.
Good if you can use an Argos voucher to get £5 or £10 off.
I had bought a Canvio Connect II 3TB yesterday but I prefer the design of the Canvio Ready.
Also the Ready USB 3 lead seems thinner and an improved spec.

Thanks much appreciated, I'd been looking for a 'Black' version, though 'Blue' will do! :smile:

Oh come on, I just spent £75 on this from Argos a few days ago. Reckon they'll let me return/repurchase?

whats the wireless option like ? can you transfer files wirleessly to the drive? thinking about connecting to my sheild tv as a plex host..

Ah did that straight away. Only 27.5 hrs to go for the extended test to finish. Wish I had one of those USB fans now to keep it cool. Ta again.

great deal. Ordered thanks

Be quick for your upgrade I think Microsoft finish the free upgrades on the 29th of this month.

Of course an external hard drive is a backup solution, it's just possibly more risky than other options, but a second copy of any file, is a backup. It doesn't matter how reliable or otherwise external drives are, statistically speaking keeping a second copy reduces the risk of losing data, granted it won't help you if it's next to the PC when your house burns down, but that portable disk might just be grabbed on your way out when the smoke alarm kicks off. Probably should check your smoke alarm battery regularly, that would reduce the risk of losing the data quite significantly.

It's a balancing act, cost versus recoverability, in most cases your house won't burn down, but sure as the sun comes up in the morning, your PC hard drive will eventually fail, maybe in 6 months maybe 10 years.

If you backup off-site, what happens if the supplier goes pop? And it has happened, one day you've got access to your data, the next gone. You'd be mightily glad of that £65 portable hard drive then. Or what about if the cloud company decide your photo breaches there policies, this again has happened, for what was a simple innocent photo of children playing in a swimming pool.

CD/DVD/Bluray is all very well, but it's not 100% reliable, I've had DVDs fail only 2 or 3 years after they were written, not to mention my photo collection takes 9 days to backup onto 50GB blurays, DVD is a none starter now. The only local backup that's viable is to a hard drive.

Probably as important as the backups is checking the backups work, which is particularly easy with an external device, I don't personally fancy testing TB of data in the cloud against my local originals.

Backups are always a balance, of cost versus security, but you can be sure if you don't have one you will eventually lose some data.

mike

Thanks, reserved one for my xbox

because they WILL fail sooner or later.unless you have 2,yu are very likely to lose your data.
they are no where as durable as internal drives.and I've had Western Digitals,Seagates,etc doesn't matter which brand.

Well before I got the 3tb reserved I reserves a 2Tb. Taking a pass on the 2tb now so if that is what you are wanting check and you are in Wigan area check Robin Park for stock after tomorrow as I ain't picking it up.

​No, unless you say it's faulty :wink:

Are they both roughly the same size, no Connect IIs near me, but they have the Ready, is there any other difference that should be considered?

thanks

mike

Is there anything available which you don't need the pc on all the time to access remotely.

Also avaliable via ebay incase there is no stock in your local area

Seem to have all gone :disappointed:

You could try taking it back, if it's gone down in price they are only obliged to refund you the selling price, however seeing as though it's within the 14 day cooling off period, you could say it wasn't what you wanted / not fit for purpose and thus a full refund if you prove the price.
The problem there lays with 're purchasing the item. Managers discrecion, loose a customer and a sale or loose the price difference.

Great deal. Just ordered the last one locally (actually wanted two though but better than none)
Many thanks for sharing.

Managed to get what seemed to be the last one passing through Ilkeston - had a £10 off voucher as well (from another purchase) so used that to nab it for £54.99 - bit of a bargain really!

Onedrive
dropbox
google drive
etc etc?

Depends upon how much space you want of course...

Plenty of stock around Birmingham / Solihull area :smile:

Great deal but no stock anywhere near me

I dunno man, that's a whole lorra data to lose in one go.

Got the last two in my local Argos, but am tempted by same day delivery for £3.95.

Thanks OP, have a 3tb black cases one being dropped off in the next few hours.

Hello Tosh, gotta Toshiba?

Anyway to power this from a virgin router so I do not have to leave a pc on to use it as NAS?

Oos

and if Ford were to buy this drive then put all their payroll data on it, solely, then next day the drive goes phut and Ford has to cease trading and a million people lose their jobs so this is obviously a terrible disk omg don't even

They are a form thereof. Thanks for your insight though

Does anyone know if these have inbuilt ftp or smb servers?

Great Deal

Can you take out harddrive and put in nas

Just got one and opened it up and none of the documentation mentions 1 year or any time-frame. Seems unlikely it's cloud storage forever but can't find anything that says otherwise. I'll let you know if I find out any different

Can you transfer files to this wirelessly

Came to the party late as out of stock in a 20 mile radius from Northampton. Good drive though.

john Lewis price match with two year guarantee on the 2tb.

It's just a USB hard drive like any other with some bundled software. I believe it comes with "pogoplug" from pogoplug.com.

Cheers OP. Ordered the silver/grey one for collection tonight

Oh! I thought these are NAS.

thanks OP, tip to anyone needing it delivered but getting the message saying it's currently out of stock for home delivery to in your postcode, order through the Argos eBay like I had to

A backup is a backup, then you use backup for recovery...then you put backup copy:-
1/ nearby for availability of quick(er) recovery
2/ away somewhere off site for disaster recovery

No one said it was a backup 'solution'. External hard drives can serve as a removable offsite backup though, for example. I've worked at plenty of places that copy encrypted data to a set of external hard drives that are rotated daily and taken home with staff, etc. This will be fine for adding an extra backup option to your home network.

Clever marketing. I though it was one of those wireless hard drives at first.

Out of stock at Argos for pick up and nothing for home delivery. Quite happy with my Amazon one for £71.27 (student discount)

Yep, the same for me.

A Pogoplug device, probably secondhand, would do.

mike

Nice one, needed a new one for my movies for on the go etc (heat added) :sunglasses:

Well good news is that these don't seem to get too hot. Mine has been running WD diagnostic for over 18 hours and feels about as hot as it did during the first hour - warm to the touch.

come on Amazon, price match :smile:

There is a good soft made by "2brightsparks" called something like syncback that does MD5 comparison against every file it backs up (if you chose to go that way).

seems to be oos for all scottish postcodes everywhere, and no stock for home delivery.

yeah annoyingly amazon don't seem to have prices matched the 3TBs at all (they did pm the 2 TBs), probably because argos is oos pretty much everywhere, and amazon themselves are also oos.

Is the Canvio Ready quite different to this Canvio Connec tII? annoying it's £5 more, if it was the same price then would have been happy to get that instead.

Much appreciated - thanks for that

my old Samsung & Seagate 2TB portables weigh between 150g - 168g I think

I'm guessing the eBay scalpers have snapped them all up

got my drive, thanks OP. works out cheaper than Verbatim 500GB which I bought from Tesco for £10.50. I spent all my vouchers on clothes, I mean my wife did.

The Canvio Ready is longer - see this comparison photo I took with Ready below Connect. Getting faster transfer speeds (about 120 MB/s) than my Western Digital Ultra (about 100 MB/s)

Come to think of it you just reminded me that essentially I have almost always used another, lower power consumption PC - whether it be an old laptop motherboard, atom thing, or now actual servers...

... but a raspberry pi or similar small device connected to your router and a normal usb hard drive that mirrors or directly hosts your data would be pretty easy , customisable and potentially as large as you ever need (storage wise), and only a few watts!

how much does each weigh?

That's a pretty crap guess because there would be very little, if any, profit to be made after fees and postage.

I have got 2 reserved to pick up for today which I no longer require if anyone wants these reservations
1 from Barnsley store and
1 from Chesterfield

Just picked mine up. 10% discount too with my energyplus card and a £5 gift card.

Toshiba Canvio Connect II is 231 g and Canvio Ready is 299 g

Western digital datalifeguard is taking 18+ hours? Is it plugged into a USB2.0 port by any chance because that's quite a long time even for the size of drive. Partition Wizard full test took around 8hrs10mins in total on USB3.0

For anyone wondering with regards to Argos reservations, the store closed at 8pm and the item came back as available online by about 8:30pm (I reserved one to pick up today but couldn't make it so will go tomorrow)

Yeah USB 2 because my desktop is noisy while my laptop is very quiet. Didn't think USB bandwidth would have mattered. Live and learn I guess!
EDIT laptop - USB 2 Desktop USB 3

Ah right fair enough. Good test for the drive anyway at least after 18hrs+ you know it runs quiet and cool!

Just managed to reserve one in Bromsgrove if anybody lives in that direction and also available at Merry Hill Dudley.

How do you get the £5 - is it printed on the receipt?

No

Make sure you pay at the till, the person will swipe a gift card for you crediting £5 and you will get receipt which will show expiry date

And i didnt even move my lips lol

I usually pay for reservations at the machine, but I'll go to the till for this then. Thanks for letting me know! :smile:

If you use the machine, the voucher gets printed at the bottom of the receipt, you take the whole receipt to get it validated when you purchase your next item.

mike

Part of me thinks it might be worth getting the physical gift card, especially if I find out they don't actually have it in stock (could happen). Then I'll get £5 for my wasted journey, which seems fair to me! :sunglasses:

This is still on offer

yes this price is great only if you actually want one yourself. Not much profit margins for the vultures.

Canvio Connect II white now showing as £99.99 when you add it to basket.
Argos Website still showing £64.99 (was £109.99)

was back in stock east London area this morning

yeah, same for me last night - found a place reasonably-local Argos with stock but the price was £99.99 when added to basket :thinking:

Bit of a problem with this on the laptop - can't right click and Eject.
Safely Remove icon was there to use but even when pop-up said 'safe to remove' the disk was still spinning so chose a safer route and put laptop to sleep to remove the drive safely.

The blue one has also gone up to £99.99 - Does my reserved one still stand at £64.99? It is going to cost me a few quid in travel to the store so I need to be sure before I visit!

Thats the difference when buying on FastTrack as price is fixed at point of purchase but a Reservation isnt.

I find USB Disk Ejector really handy. Mind to donate, if you do too. quickandeasysoftware.net/sof…tor

I remember some old hotuk post mention: bring your print out (such as argos email showing the reserved price) and show it to the cashier then the manager/cashier would manual change back to the reserve price.

Not sure if this help you or not.

Didn't even get that far as she tapped in the reservation number and it 'wasn't in stock yet'

So I'll be complaining to Argos about that including my asking for a refund of my £3.60 train ticket!

So is there any way to get the 10GB of storage and use it like dropbox or does it have to be connected to this drive?

Anyone else done this?? I'm in the same boat

Yes. I just went to the counter to pay and showed the reservation email and the cashier honoured the reservation price without issue.

Hi, Anyone know how you access the 10GB cloud storage that comes with this drive?

Just answering my own question:

The below are instructions on how to register for the 10GB Cloud Storage using the Pogoplug software.

1. Install the Pogoplug PC software that is on the Canvio External HDD. Ensure the Pogoplug software is NOT downloaded from the Pogoplug website as this will only provide you with 5GB of Cloud storage.



2. Run the Pogoplug software.

3. Create a new account of Pogoplug PC when the Canvio external HDD is connected with the computer where the Pogoplug PC Software is installed.

4. Once created you should now have access to 10GB of Cloud storage.

Note:

a. Please ensure the Canvio Connect External HDD is connected during the creation of the Pogoplug account, otherwise you will only receive 5GB of cloud storage even if step 1 is followed correctly.

b. Existing Pogoplug accounts that have 5GB of cloud storage space cannot be upgraded to the 10GB.

Does the 10GB storage expire?

Just picked mine up, for some reason I didn't get an email, but just had a text. Spoke to someone and just explained that the price had gone up when I checked on their machine. They checked the reservation on their system and it said £65. Staff said you pay the price that you reserve at.

Hope that helps

Hi, Anyone know how you access the 10GB cloud storage that comes with this drive?

My drive just started failing, not sure about the warranty ;((((