This is an inexpensive and very compact drive. Worked fine directly connected to USB 3 ports on two Windows 7 notebooks I have.
Unfortunately my target device was not Windows. As a standards based USB device using NTFS there is no theoretical reason it is not plug and play anywhere those devices can connect. Well, it was not recognized at all by the pogoplug storage server where I needed it.
Internet search for help produced lots of feedback to people with Macs who had struggled, but the only Toshiba site help request similar to mine had gone unanswered for over a year. So I guess I will just ebay mine or save it for some Windows-specific project.
In fairness... it is cheap. If you want it for Windows, go for it!
As a side note, there is no useful documentation included with the drive. (well, since is should be plug-and-play USB, why would documentation be needed?) But Toshiba has placed some software on the drive for you to load on your Windows box. There is no "readme" or other indication about the purpose of the software. (As I have said, on Windows you don't need any software to use it).
I thought that perhaps starting the "setup" executable would display some sort of banner or message to indicate software's purpose.
Nothing.
I cancelled the installation. There are enough companies out there who want to put mysterious executables on your computer.
I don't install unidentified software with no clear purpose.

I am transferring data today to this new drive. The speed is wicked fast on a USB 3 port on an HP laptop running Win 7. The system recognized the drive right away and found the software on the drive itself with no issue. Haven't tried the other software included yet. The review I saw where a user returned the drive because of a California required notice of lead on the cable is missing something good here! Compact and looks well made. I see it is sold out right now at Amazon and third party vendors have raised their prices quite a bit to cash in. Must be a very popular drive.

I have wanted one of these for years! My sons surprised me with it for Mother's Day but the best surprise was they went through all our old pc's and put my pics and files on there from the past 10 years. There was enough room to backup my new computer as well as my files on my computer at work. So easy to use. Set up was a breeze. Easy to organize my files. This is a great gift for anyone. Better safe than sorry with this backup storage device. I wish my Mom had this before her computer crashed last month.

I'm a beginning photographer (also a momtographer) and have way too many photos on my computer so I needed somewhere safe to transfer them to so I wouldn't use up all the room on the computer itself. I don't even know how many photos and videos I have transferred onto this but it is a lot and I still have plenty of space for more. I like the size of it as well. Its not big and bulky and doesn't get in the way. I can unplug it when I'm done using it and put it in a safe spot without taking up any room.

I don't use this a lot, because I use it to backup my computer. I only bought this one, because my last Toshiba external hard drive is about 7 years old and would hate for it to kick the bucket (after my laptop did). This hard drive is about 3/4's the size of my old one but has twice the storage. Gotta love that! So my old external hard drive is still going strong and i liked it so much that i bought this one. If anything crazy happens, I'll update this review.