When comparing WD My Passport vs Toshiba Canvio Advance, the Slant community recommends WD My Passport for most people. In the question“What are the best external hard drives?” WD My Passport is ranked 4th while Toshiba Canvio Advance is ranked 5th. The most important reason people chose WD My Passport is:
At 0.54lbs, it's quite portable and easy to just throw into a bag and carry around.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Very portable
At 0.54lbs, it's quite portable and easy to just throw into a bag and carry around.
Pro Relatively long warranty
The WD My Passport comes with a 3-year warranty.
Pro Large Capacity options
Models available to up to 4TB.
Pro Supports Mac and PC
Supports both NTFS and HFS+(needs formating).
Pro Has a backup software
Western Digital provides a backup application that can be downloaded from the manufacturer's site. You can use the application to create automated backups or manual on-demand backups.
Pro WD is generally more reliable than Seagate Drives
Pro Performance
Speedy performance.
Pro Backup software
Toshiba provides backup software.
Pro Encryption software
Toshiba provides encryption software, there is no hardware encryption though.
Cons
Con Relatively slow for single-file transfers
Even though it has a 201.8MB/s write speed, according to benchmarks it's surprisingly slow with single-file transfers compared to other portable hard drives.
Con Doesn't have a Thunderbolt port
If you use a Mac or a higher end Windows unit, you may have experienced the speed of Thunderbolt external devices. Thunderbolt drives are more expensive than USB drives. Though, a similar 5400 rpm drive using a Thunderbolt connection can read 1.5x faster than USB 3. But you may not care depending on your usage. It has not hurt some users, some 80% of computer users will not find any benefit to Thunderbolt.