AnandTech Review: G-Technology G-Drive with Thunderbolt
By Jim Bask
G-Technology started using HGST’s helium-filled hard drives in their direct-attached storage (DAS) products earlier this year. The product lines utilizing these 8TB and 10TB drives include:
- G-Drive with Thunderbolt (single drive enclosure)
- G-Speed Studio with Thunderbolt (four-bay enclosure with hardware RAID)
- G-Speed Studio XL with Thunderbolt (eight-bay enclosure with hardware RAID)
- G-Drive USB (single drive enclosure)
- G-RAID USB (two-bay hot-swap enclosure with hardware RAID)
- G-RAID with Thunderbolt (two-bay hot-swap enclosure with hardware RAID)
- G-Speed Shuttle XL with Thunderbolt (eight-bay / six-bay + 2 ev Series adapters hot-swap enclosures with hardware RAID)
- G-Speed Studio XL with Thunderbolt(six-bay + 2 ev Series adapters hot-swap enclosures with hardware RAID)
- G-Rack 12 and G-Rack 12 Exp expansion chassis (NAS with 12 bays + 12 additional expansion bays using G-Technology’s custom NAS OS based on btrfs)
We have not published any hands-on reviews of G-Technology’s products till now. Keeping that in mind, G-Technology wanted to start us off with one of their basic offerings – the G-Drive with Thunderbolt. The 8TB version packs a HGST Ultrastar He8 3.5″ SATA hard-drive in a sealed enclosure with one Thunderbolt port and one USB 3.0 port. At any given point of time, either device port can be used to access the drive. The G-Technology G-Drive with Thunderbolt 8TB currently sells for $600. The HGST Ultrastar He8 sells for approximately $500 (the official version with warranty from HGST), putting the cost of an all-aluminum, Thunderbolt + USB 3.0 enclosure at $100. As far as the premium for Thunderbolt peripherals go, the pricing is not outrageous. That said, we must keep in mind that the device uses the first-generation Thunderbolt silicon / mini-DP-type port…[continue reading]