As a video editor, I’m regularly looking for a good portable hard drive that can serve a couple different purposes. Some I’m looking to box up and mail across the country to different marketing firms or editing companies, others I’m looking to carry with me when I have to leave the office but still need immediate and fast access to in-progress projects. In recent years, I’ve leaned heavily on different LaCie Rugged drives for both these tasks, but a new drive from G-Tech has taken over the latter task: The G-Drive Mobile SSD. With 500GB of SSD speeds through a USB-C connection, this little guy is so small it fits into a jacket pocket, but usually has enough storage capacity to handle whole video projects and allow me to work on them remotely directly into my MacBook Pro. I say that like it’s a rare experience and, unfortunately, it kind of is.

Recently I flew to Las Vegas for a tradeshow, WPPI, but I was also in the process of working on a testimonial project for a tech company here in San Francisco. Not sure if I would need to tweak the project while I was out for a week, I opted to transfer the whole thing to the G-Drive Mobile. For video, I need something that can handle the data transfer speeds necessary to not get frustrated, even when I’m working with proxy files. In this specific case, I was toting around the original files in full 4K because we were so close to exporting a finished project, so having a high speed drive on hand was even more important.

As a note, I have several drives that would have worked for this project, except most weren’t USB-C compatible, and none of them were Thunderbolt 3 compatible that had this much capacity. Given that my mobile workstation is a 2017 MacBook Pro, having something fast, with a lot of storage capacity, that also connects directly to my computer was what I was primarily looking for (no #donglelife)…read more

From digitalphotopro.com

At some point in the relatively-near future, the traditional hard drive-comprised of spinning platters of magnetic material will disappear from the marketplace. The fragility of conventional drives is offset by the low cost of production, but as solid-state memory drops in price, the cost benefits of sticking with a large, delicate recording device in computers will disappear and Solid State Drive (SSD) hard drives will become the norm. The G|Drive mobile SSD is an indication of the shape (and size) of things to come.

Already, computers like the iMac Pro have ditched the hard drive in favor of the SSD, using the extra space gained in the swap to add more high-power processing. Laptops are almost universally SSD-driven, and the primary remaining use of traditional drives is in high-capacity storage where fast speeds aren’t necessary, and the price is a primary concern.

The benefits of SSD drives are twofold; the chip-based storage offers both high speed, and small size. The G-Technology G|Drive mobile SSD is a perfect example of how this storage transition will change how photographers and videographers work.

G|Drive mobile SSD

The G|Drive mobile SSD is smaller than the Apple mouse I’m using while writing this review, smaller in every dimension. I can put the G|Drive mobile SSD in my pocket, and it feels less cumbersome than my wallet….[continue reading]

by: Jeff Benjamin

As a MacBook owner, USB-C peripherals are still a little hard to come by. The accessory situation has improved significantly over the past year. One of the latest USB-C-centric peripherals to hit the scenes is an external bus-powered hard drive from the folks over at G-Technology. If you’re looking for a way to quickly offload files to and from your MacBook, the G-Drive mobile is a good option.

First, the particulars. This is a G-Drive mobile 1TB external spinning disk hard drive. As such, it’s not as fast as solid state offerings, but it comes pretty close to its 136MB/s speed rating. The speed of the drive is thanks to the 7200 RPM Western Digital hard drive enclosed inside the aluminum and plastic housing.

The best thing about this drive, besides its usage of USB-C, is that it’s bus powered. This means that you can easily connect it to your MacBook with a single USB-C cable and handle your business. G-Technology includes two extra-stout looking USB-C cables — one, a USB-C to USB-C cable, and another USB-C to USB-A cable for interfacing with older hardware.

The mobile USB-C drive features USB 3.1 Gen 1, which maxes out at 5Gbps. Of course, the speed of the drive won’t come close to saturating the amount of available throughput, but it’s worth noting.

Video Review

…Continue To Full Article