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Review: G-Technology’s G-Drive USB is a pro-grade Mac hard drive at consumer prices, in 2TB-6TB sizes

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Professional video editors and filmmakers have raved about G-Technology’s hard drives for over a decade. These users — day-one adopters of Apple’s Mac Pro and MacBook Pro computers — need a lot of hard disk space, fast interfaces, and above all else, reliability. Losing part or all of a project can kill a movie, so nothing is left to chance on the storage side. I’m not a video professional, but as a father, my family photos and home videos are some of my most valuable possessions, and I don’t want to lose them to a hard drive failure. Numerous recommendations led me to Hitachi GST subsidiary G-Technology’s G-Drives years ago, and now there’s a new entry-level model that’s affordable enough for everyone: G-Drive USB ($160-$400, available here for $150 and up).

G-Drive USB offers all the capacity, speed and reliability G-Tech drives are known for, but in a smaller enclosure with fewer ports on the back. I’ve been testing one for the past month, and it’s as excellent as the five earlier G-Tech drives I’ve used since 2006. G-Drive USB isn’t the cheapest hard drive around, but when you care about long-term reliability, it’s worth paying a premium for peace of mind.

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I’ve loved the industrial designs of LaCie hard drives for a long time, but from my perspective, if the actual hard drive mechanism isn’t certain to be reliable after a couple of years — a known but somewhat undiscussed issue with many brands of hard drives — the casing doesn’t matter. G-Technology’s desktop hard disks offer the best of both worlds: a substantial-feeling, Mac-matching perforated aluminum enclosure, plus a 7200RPM hard drive inside, backed by a 3-year warranty.

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Apart from four clear white rubber feet on the bottom and a glowing white G status light on front, G-Drive USB is completely made from metal, and if you love Apple’s Mac designs, beautiful in its own right. Measuring 5″ wide by 7.7″ deep by 1.26″ tall, it’s a half-inch shorter and 1.5″ shallower than the standard G-Drive, a substantial savings in size that makes the USB version easier to move around if needed. G-Technology has slimmed the unit as much as is practical to house a full-sized hard drive — the only mechanical disk size we’d trust with important files, photos, and videos. Smaller laptop hard drives tend to compromise reliability for size, which isn’t wise for backups or important files.

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G-Drive USB currently comes in four different capacities: 2TB ($160, here for $150), 3TB ($180, here for $170), and 4TB ($200, here for $190) models with 165MB/second peak transfer rates, plus a 6TB model ($400, here for $350) with a 226MB/second peak transfer rate. Every model has the same USB 3.0 port on the back, and ships with a USB 3.0 cable that’s backward-compatible with USB 2.0 devices. You also get a slim power adapter that — unlike some G-Drives — only occupies one power outlet.

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The USB 3.0 interface is what enables G-Drive USB to sell at $40 to $150 discounts versus older, comparable-capacity G-Drives, which include Firewire 800, USB 3.0, and sometimes eSATA connectors and cables. Yet USB 3.0 can beat Firewire 800 in raw performance. I purchased a 4TB G-Drive USB with the 165MB/second peak transfer rate, and reliably achieved 140MB/second read and write speeds when using a MacBook Pro with USB 3.0 ports. That’s twice as fast as the 69MB/second write and 55MB/second read speeds I get from my older 2TB regular G-Drive using Firewire 800, and still almost twice as fast as my newer 3TB G-Drive (78MB/second read, 73MB/second write). G-Drive USB’s performance drops when connected to older USB 2.0 Macs — I saw 32MB/s read and 26MB/s write speeds — which is to say that modern Macs will get over four times better performance from the same device, though all of these speeds are totally fine for consumer-grade backups. G-Tech notably promises the same 165MB/second peak transfer rate for a Thunderbolt version of G-Drive, which sells for a lot more.

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From my perspective, the 4TB version of G-Drive USB is the family’s sweet spot, which is the reason I purchased it over the 2TB, 3TB, and 6TB models. It’s faster and higher-capacity than the Firewire 800 G-Drives it replaced in my office, yet also smaller, less expensive, and quieter — not silent, but whisper-quiet, with half the sound of prior G-Drives. Most importantly, I’ve never had an issue with the reliability of any G-Drive I’ve owned; the units I purchased eight years ago still work after being used for everything from backups to file storage. As Mac accessories go, G-Drive USB is as highly recommended as they come — my personal Mac accessory of the year, and a great entry point into professional-grade backup and storage solutions.

[Note: If you’re thinking of ordering a G-Drive, this is a perfect time to give Amazon Prime a try to save on shipping costs. I’ve ordered G-Drives using Amazon for a long time, reducing the total cost considerably with free Prime shipping and nice discounts on the drives themselves.]

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Comments

  1. It’s true that G-Drives have really improved of late. I used to have an old 2TB drive which worked great on USB but didn’t want to work with either Firewire 800 or eSata for sustained IO operations.

    These days, I’m running several G-Drives, including a G-RAID Studio. And I have to say that these days, they’re rock solid.

    They even have the nice Mac-friendly design ethos.

    For what it’s worth, I use Thunderbolt and USB 3 drives for video editing, and if I’m out and about, the USB 3 drive wins when connected to a MacBook Pro Retina: it allows me to use other Thunderbolt devices and still have a relatively fast drive for preliminary edits.

    • Edison Wrzosek - 9 years ago

      Thanks for the info Nikki. I remember only a few years ago most G-Drive units having no more than a 2-star rating on the Apple Store from owners, but glad to see they’ve stepped up their game.

      Like Jeremy commented below, Hitachi drives are reported to be some of the toughest units on the market, followed closely by WD. I would trust their units any day, and seems like their G-Drive enclosures have caught up to the drives!

  2. Harry MacArthur - 9 years ago

    Thanks for the news on G-drives. Can you share any data on the reliability of the G-drive as compared to a consumer grade Western Digital or Seagate? Do you have any mean-time-to failure statistics to share to support the claim of superior reliability?

    • Jeremy Horwitz - 9 years ago

      While useful in the abstract, MTBF ratings are extremely model-specific (e.g. MTBF for a 2TB drive may be different from MTBF for a 6TB drive with the same branding) and even batch-specific. The MTBF standard has also recently been dropped by the companies you’re mentioning; Western Digital “no longer measure[s] the reliability of our hard drives using MTBF” (http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/665/~/how-drive-reliability-is-measured-and-the-mtbf-of-wd-drives) and Seagate “is changing to another standard: ‘Annualized Failure Rate’ (AFR).”

      Hitachi (owner of G-Tech and maker of the hard disks used inside G-Drives) sells enterprise-class drives that claim up to 2 million hours between failures (typically G-Speed units), versus Deskstars (typical of G-Drives) with 1 million hours between failures. Noting that 96.9% of Hitachi drives were still working after 36 months of intense use, versus 73.5% for Seagate and 94.8% for Western Digital, Backblaze’s mass test of various drives concluded that “if the price were right, we would be buying nothing but Hitachi drives. They have been rock solid, and have had a remarkably low failure rate.” https://www.backblaze.com/blog/what-hard-drive-should-i-buy/

      Hope that helps!

  3. You’re a little behind the times. Hitachi’s drive division no longer exists, it was bought by WD. http://www.wdc.com/en/company/hgst/ G-Tech is a WD brand now and contains WD drives.

    • Jeremy Horwitz - 9 years ago

      Israel, HGST (and G-Technology) still exist as WD companies. But I’ve updated the piece to clarify “Hitachi GST” versus just “Hitachi.”

  4. Todd Bruss - 9 years ago

    Pro drives should have Thunderbolt. Try copying or downloading to 2 USB 3.0 drives at the same time. For instance sync Dropbox on one drive and run Time Machine on another. The USB bus can’t handle more than one drive at a time. SSDs may be different but multiple solid state drives at the same time under USB. Try the same task with Thunderbolt and better yet pair thunderbolt with SSDs and you’ll have a much better storage solution that fast enough for any task.

    • Jeremy Horwitz - 9 years ago

      A year or so ago, I tested an Elgato Thunderbolt Drive+ SSD with both Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 connections that hit 422MB/sec via the USB port and 373MB/sec using Thunderbolt. Obviously the USB bus (more commonly shared by multiple devices) and Thunderbolt bus (sometimes only one port on a machine, sometimes two) have a few differences that can impact how devices perform when sharing bandwidth, amongst other factors, so the numbers can vary. But Thunderbolt alone isn’t a guarantee of better throughput, SSD or not, and there is a $190 price premium to add Thunderbolt to a 4TB G-Drive ($380 total), and no viably priced option to do 4TB in an SSD…

  5. Tony Clark (@tcphoto) - 9 years ago

    I have owned five GTechnology drives without an issue for eight years and love them. I bought three of the mini drives, they’ve traveled nicely and I will look at adding a couple more as the current pair fill up.