Hard disk drives nonetheless rule the roost when coping with bus-powered moveable storage gadgets which are economical on a $/Gb foundation, significantly at larger capability factors. Seagate and Western Digital provide capacities starting from 1TB to 5TB of their Portable / Backup Plus and My Passport HDD lineups. Toshiba’s bus-powered Canvio lineup contains the Canvio Slim (1TB and 2TB), Canvio Advance, Canvio Basics, and Canvio Ready (1TB-4TB) fashions. Today, Toshiba is including new fashions targeted on the gaming market (add-on storage for consoles) whereas increasing cross-platform compatibility. The Advance and Ready fashions are additionally getting a redesigned exterior.
The two new fashions – Canvio Flex and Canvio Gaming – goal completely different market segments. Both characteristic storage capacities of as much as 4TB, and make the most of shingled magnetic recording (SMR) know-how. They include a USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps) Micro-B interface. The Flex comes with each USB-C and USB-A cables for wider compatibility with a spread of computing platforms. The Gaming mannequin options personalized firmware (with an ‘Always-On’ characteristic, which we assume disables the parking of the heads when idle so long as energy is on the market).
Toshiba expects the brand new Canvio Flex and Gaming fashions to develop into accessible in Fall 2020. Pricing was not accessible at launch time – the 4TB Basics / Advance at the moment have a avenue worth round $90-$100, and we anticipate the Flex and Gaming to land round that. In phrases of competitors, each Seagate and Western Digital have had their 4TB (and even 5TB) bus-powered SMR fashions available in the market for just a few years, although the efficiency profile is broadly completely different. We would have preferred Toshiba to introduce a 5TB mannequin to go towards the complete stack from their rivals. That mentioned, the brand new fashions do allow the corporate to tweak the firmware and equipment to serve particular market segments in a greater method.
