I used this drive for about 2 years with my MacBook Pro to archive photos, videos, etc. It wasn't my Time Machine external, just something I'd plug in every once in awhile to transfer files onto.

It worked pretty well"”very small, portable, fast read/write speeds"”until a few months ago, when it started ejecting unexpectedly. This would happen under a variety of circumstances: moving the drive while plugged in, touching the connector cord, and (inexplicably) when I would unplug my external speakers. The drive's instability escalated to the point where random ejections would happen on a daily basis, and then I eventually got the attached error message (see photo).

After reading some of the other reviews, it stands to reason that the drive's construction is sub-par. I would highly recommend a sturdier drive with an external power source.

We purchased a couple of these a little over a year ago. At first they were great, easy to use, easy to download to. We are not great technical people, that was important to us. However, after a year of pretty easy, uncomplicated use, neither device works anymore.
The computer does not even recognize one of the devices, we have plugged it into multiple computers and tried different cords, but the computer will not recognize the device.
The second one is now very very slow. When we first purchased it, it was so easy to download to. I erased everything, followed all the instructions, but it now takes double to triple the amount of time to download any file to the device, making it nearly impossible to use.

This HDD is absolutely fantastic. Works great, is very quiet and discrete, and the slim design of it is outstanding. The HDD is powered directly by the current that is output through the USB port on your PC, laptop, or gaming console, and therefore does not require an external power source. This makes for a much more streamlined and clean setup. I really love it.

I did subtract one star because it is not clear that only the latest USB 3.0 ports are capable of fully powering this HDD. If you want to run this HDD on an older device that has USB 2.0 ports, you may need to buy a Y-cable so that you can harness the power of two ports to run this device. If the HDD packaging or description would have clarified this better, I would have given 5 stars.

My CD burner died and I had a ton of files I needed to back up - computer has been acting like it wants to go belly up for a while (runs XP so yeah it's old). So I needed it backed up before I lost everything. Was thinking of getting several thumb drives but for the price there was no way I'd pass up this drive.

I've only had it for a couple weeks, but thus far I'm suppppppppppppperrrrrrrrrr happy with it. I've been able to dump a lot of files from my computer onto the drive, freeing up a couple hundred gig - I've got photo folders that are more than 10 gig each so burning them to CD just wasn't a viable option - even if the burner was working. Though, it claims to be a 1TB drive, due to the software already loaded it is more like 970GB, just saying.

Didn't have to download any software (from cd), all it took was plugging in the drive and turning on the computer, click one (maybe two) ok prompts and it was loaded in all of maybe 2 min. It took all of an hour to one shot bulk transfer nearly 350 gig worth of data (music, video, pic and data files). Even trying to transfer 10 gig onto a thumb drive use to take longer than that. Not only are my files now safely backed up, but they are easily transferred to the laptop without any hassle. No more bouncing between multiple thumb drives trying to find one or two files, no more fumbling thru CDs trying to find what I'm looking for, now it is all in one convenient place.

Only negative I have with the drive, is it easily shows fingerprints on the case. I love the sleek metallic black look, but even the slightest touch leaves marks that look bad. So I constantly have to wipe off prints.

The Toshiba Canvio Slim II is a fantastic external hard drive. It's small, sturdy, sleek looking and very easy to use. It has enough space for a lot of photos, movies, music, and more. The only reason I did not give this product five stars was because it wasn't entirely convenient to set up. I found a YouTube video that explained how to set up the external hard drive for a Mac which was helpful. Mac users should be aware that this hard drive is first made for a Windows product, not a Mac product, therefore you have to set up the hard drive for Mac. The tutorial I found was very easy to understand and follow and is actually for a Seagate product, but this tutorial nonetheless still follows the exact same set of steps needed for the Toshiba Slim: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kf9K_x4Z7p8

Overall, a great product, with a minor convenience issue. I still would recommend this product.