After completing the steps, you should be able to start using the storage as usual. If you can't get the storage online, and it was recently available, that could mean the drive is corrupted, disconnected, or it's not getting power. Fixing drive status unreadable

In a bigger-picture sense, SSDs (which have no moving parts) have largely made the notion of a "fast" hard drive a bit old-fashioned. Even the slowest external SSD is faster than a 7,200rpm hard drive, often several times over, depending on what you're transferring and measuring. To make this matter even moreconfusing, the naming convention for USB 3.2 is relatively new. It was gradually moved to USB 3.2 Gen 1 and USB 3.2 Gen 2 from various flavors of "USB 3.1," thanks to some (in our opinion) ill-advised branding shenanigans by USB's governing body. ( See our explainer.) A relatively new entry in Toshiba’s Canvio line-up, you can guess who the Canvio Gaming is aimed at. It gives you more space to run and store games on your last-gen Xbox One or PS4 console, and makes an ideal archive drive for games you’re not currently playing on an Xbox Series console, PS5 or PC. Sequential transfer speeds – 149.79MB/sec read and 156.78MB/sec write – are well above average, while its random write speeds are surprisingly good, though its random read speeds don’t really measure up. In my early career, I worked as an editor of scholarly science books, and as an editor of "Dummies"-style computer guidebooks for Brady Books (now, BradyGames). I'm a lifetime New Yorker, a graduate of New York University's journalism program, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

Once you complete the steps, the system will proceed to create a new volume with a partition and a drive letter. Fixing drive with an unsupported file system Once you've completed these steps, Windows 10 should detect and configure the drive automatically. Wrapping things up On the USB front, the latest interface is called USB 3.2, implemented mainly on USB Type-C ports. It's common on current Windows PCs, and a staple in all the latest MacBook Air and Pro laptops. (In the case of the Macs, it is paired with support for Thunderbolt 3 or 4 on the same ports.) USB Type-C is a slim, oval-shaped port with a cable that you can insert either side up. For all their uses, USB ports like to mess with us from time to time, so it helps to troubleshoot the port.

Remember: no matter how fast the port is, if the hard disk or SSD within the drive can’t run fast enough, you won’t see any benefits. The same goes if your computer doesn’t support that connection speed; you’d be surprised how few desktops and laptops have even a single USB 3.2 gen 2×2 port. Beyond that, USB 3.2 (the speed specification) comes in two primary (and one rarer) flavors as of this writing: "Gen 1" and "Gen 2." The iteration called "USB 3.2 Gen 2" has a maximum theoretical interface speed of 10Gbps. (Few single external devices can saturate that interface, even most solid-state drives.) "USB 3.2 Gen 1," on the other hand, is identical in maximum potential speed to old, familiar USB 3.0. (Confusing, we know.) There's also the uncommon 20Gbps "USB 3.2 Gen 2x2," an interface found in some high-speed external SSDs and using USB Type-C ports exclusively. To get its full speed benefits, you need a computer that specifically supports it, or else need to get a compatible expansion card or motherboard. This new drive from Toshiba has a few advantages over older favourites from Seagate And Western Digital. First, it’s relatively fast by HDD standards, with sequential read speeds of over 150MB/sec and write speeds of 160MB/sec. It’s actually a smidgen faster than the excellent Canvio Gaming. And while its random read/write speeds aren’t anything to write home about, they’re no worse than those of comparable drives, and we’d recommend an SSD these days for actively running Windows apps or games. In addition to their physical shape differences, USB ports on the computer side will variously support USB 3.0, 3.1, or 3.2, depending on the age of the computer and how up to date its marketing materials are. You don't have to worry about the differences among these three USB specs when looking at ordinary hard drives, though. All are inter-compatible, and you won't see a speed bump from one versus the other in the hard drive world. The drive platters' own speed is the limiter, not the flavor of USB 3. When used with a USB Type-C cable, the SanDisk Extreme rises above the competition with some stellar numbers. The design and form factor are spot on and while we have one reservation regarding the bundled cable, you can’t go wrong at this price.

The best external drives for Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S

Alternatively, you can try connecting the drive to a different computer, but if this isn't working, there's a good chance the drive or controller is dead. Fixing drive letter Just how much faster is it to access data stored in flash cells? Typical read and write speeds for consumer drives with spinning platters are in the 100MBps to 200MBps range, depending on platter densities and whether they spin at 5,400rpm (more common) or 7,200rpm (less common). External SSDs offer at least twice that speed and now, often much more, with typical results on our benchmark tests in excess of 400MBps for the slowest ones. Practically speaking, this means you can move gigabytes of data (say, a 4GB feature-length film, or a year's worth of family photos) to an external SSD in seconds rather than the minutes it would take with an external spinning drive. A few drives feature secondary enclosures that are removable, adding another layer of protection between the drive and the casing. These are typically sealed with O-rings all the way around, allowing the drive inside extra moisture protection. In other cases, the removable element might just be a rubber or silicone wrapper around an outer metal or plastic external-drive casing. That said, as a platter-based hard drive, it's best equipped to store a game library; you're better off loading the games you're currently playing from an SSD. If you conservatively figure an average game size of 100GB, the 4TB version tested here can hold about 40 titles, serving as the stylish main repository of your collection for years to come, and for a much more modest outlay than you'd spend on an SSD of similar capacity. Who It's For

Once connected, you may need to enable the drive in Windows using the Disk Management tool, as detailed in Step 3 above. If a drive’s looks matter to you, you’ll definitely have choices. Manufacturers these days frequently market portable drives as fashion accessories, selling them in various sizes, shapes, and colors. How we test external hard drives SSDs are small and extremely robust, which makes them great for moving media libraries or big projects between PCs or transferring Steam games from your PC to your laptop. And with read speeds anywhere between 500MB/sec and a staggering 3.2GB/sec (with the right connectivity – see below), you’ll be amazed how fast these things can go. Transfers that used to take ten or 20 minutes suddenly happen in a minute or less. What kind of connectivity should I look for?

Give your Xbox a serious storage boost with the best external SSDs and HDDs and plug-in expansion cards

Neither the name of the University of California, Berkeley nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission. Most portable external SSDs aren't expressly advertised as rugged, though ADATA, LaCie, SanDisk, and a few others do offer such drives, with caps to cover their ports to protect their innards from moisture. But in a general sense, any portable SSD should hold up to drops and being jostled around in a bag better than almost any traditional portable hard drive. If that's the extent of the extra protection you're after, a portable SSD, rugged or not, is enticing, particularly if you don't need lots of storage space.

Solid-state drives (SSDs) have fewer moving parts than traditional hard drives, and they offer the speediest access to your data. Unlike a conventional disk-based hard drive, which stores data on a spinning platter or platters accessed by a moving magnetic head, an SSD uses a collection of flash cells—similar to the ones that make up a computer's RAM—to save data. In general, how much torture a given drive can take varies according to the nature of its enclosure. Some will let you drive a car over them. Others might be designed to handle just a short fall off a desk, and not much more.Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test. A drive letter conflict is a common problem with removable devices, and you can fix this issue with these steps: Then, all the names changed: not once, but twice. And, just in case this was all too easy for you, the USB standards body has also dreamt up the term “SuperSpeed” and added that into the mix too.