Once the write cache became saturated, the performance declined significantly to an average of 921MB/s when it hit the end of the 64GB file. Our tests, carried out with CrystalDiskMark, Atto and AS SSD, yielded similar results with read and write speeds between 430MBps and 441MBps, roughly what you’d expect from a USB 3.0 port. A 10GB file was transferred in 73.8 seconds, which translates into a real-life transfer speed of 136MBps. The drive uses 3D NAND which delivers lower power consumption and cheaper prices. It was detected as a SanDisk X600, an M.2 SATA model that features WD’s 64-layer 3D NAND flash. You do get a five year warranty with it but you will have to send the defective drive to Sandisk at your own expense. It is worth noting that if you use a data recovery service, you will not void an otherwise valid limited warranty as long as you get a written verification from the service provider. The competition

Offering an industry-leading 5-year limited warranty, the G-DRIVE SSD is ready to provide high-performance storage for years to come. Using the AJA Video Systems test, and a single 64GB file, the test started well enough with a write performance of greater than 2,000MB/s until it wrote around 34GB. On Crystal DiskMark, the SanDisk Professional G-Drive SSD came within striking distance of its rating, delivering 958MBps read and 961MBps write. Only two of our Gen 2 comparison drives exceeded their rated speeds—the SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD V2, with 1,072MBps read and 1,044MBps write, and the WD My Passport SSD, which managed a read speed of 1,066MBps. (We tested its write speed at 954MBps.) The G-Technology G-Drive 4TB is still very much competitive with rivals launched in 2017. Final verdict In short, it is on par with the excellent PRO-G40, delivering blistering 2750MB/s reads and 2500MB/s writes using CrystalDiskMark 8.0.4. as a simple benchmark test.

The cable is too short for use with a desktop system but fine for a laptop, assuming that it has Thunderbolt ports and not USB-C. The potential confusion that could easily arise when the drive and its cable plug easily into a computer, phone or tablet with USB-C but then fails to work. A footnote about the branding. G-Tech (from which G-Drive is derived) started life as part of HGST, which was acquired by Western Digital. G-Tech survived as a rival to Seagate’s LaCie, supplying rugged, external, reliable storage devices and accessories to outdoor enthusiasts, prosumers and professionals. With the recent launch of Sandisk Professional, it is likely that G-Tech and G-Drive will be sunsetted in the near future.

The SSD controller and the NAND Flash memory used are unknown; however, we’d assume that it shares some DNA with the SN530, Western Digital’s entry level NVMe platform. A protective aluminum core helps prevent overheating and maintains high performance, while a custom enclosure insulates the drive when in use.The included cable is only 20cm long and made explicitly for Thunderbolt 3.0 and its repurposed USB-C interface. The G-Drive mobile SSD has a USB 3.1 Gen 2 port which in theory can transfer data at up to 10Gbps, twice what traditional USB 3.0 can achieve. However, we paired it with one of the latter and couldn’t achieve the maximum rated transfer speeds of up to 560MBps. Solid state drives don’t utilize moving parts, so the G-Drive SSD is able to endure accidental bumps or drops to help protect against data loss and system failures. The Perfect Travel Companion We’ve seen numerous ways to avoid this issue, some sold by Western Digital, the owners of the SanDisk brand, so why they didn’t use them here is a mystery.

Being able to read or write at these high levels is helpful for those that need to get on a plane or train or have other time pressures on them. As an external drive that supports the USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface, the G-Drive SSD has rated sequential read and write speeds of 1,050MBps and 1,000MBps respectively. There are faster (around 2,000MBps) drives that rely on USB 3.2 Gen 2x2, including two of the units in our performance comparisons, the SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable SSD V2 and the Seagate FireCuda Gaming SSD. At this time, however, few laptops natively support Gen 2x2, slowing the Extreme Pro and FireCuda to Gen 2 speeds. Besides paying a premium for a Gen 2x2 drive, you'd likely have to replace your current system to reap its speed benefits. Overall though, if you discard the far cheaper alternatives from lesser known vendors, there’s little incentive for Sandisk to drop the price of the G-Drive further. That is particularly true given the presence of the speedier and far more expensive G-Drive Pro SSD which carries a 50% premium and a near-200% improvement in speed thanks to its Thunderbolt 3 interface. Up to 7.68TB 1 of Enterprise-class SSD storage with a one drive write per day (DW/D) endurance rating 3 give you long-term sustained performance and enhanced reliability for all your demanding workloads. These are that the drive comes pre-formatted for Apple Mac, and not Windows PC, because for whatever reason, SanDisk assumes Windows users understand partitioning and reformatting drives, where it is beyond Apple customers.

Solid, rugged, fast, and justifiably expensive

However, the problem with quoting those numbers is that the PRO will only sustain those, or specifically the write performance over a short sprint. Solid state drives don’t utilize moving parts, so the G-DRIVE Mobile SSD is able to endure accidental bumps or drops to help protect against data loss and system failures. Perhaps that would have required some software for both platforms on a dual access partition, and SanDisk has made no attempt at any software for this drive at all. The G-Drive SSD is available in capacities up to 2TB, providing small and mighty storage to edit and save your 4K footage, RAW photos, and media libraries wherever you are. 5-Year Limited Warranty Pry open this drive and you will find a Western Digital WD40EMRX-82UZ0N0, otherwise known as the WD Red. This is a 4TB hard disk drive spinning at 5400RPM with 64MB cache – a storage device that has been fine-tuned to deliver cooler temperatures in use and targets NAS users.

USB-C port with a SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps (USB 3.2 Gen 2) interface keeps this SSD ready for laptops and desktops, both old and new. Since NAND makers moved away from using DRAM to cache to make cheaper SLC technology solutions, this isn’t an issue unique to this drive, but it is something you need to be aware of. You can make your G-Technology drive Windows compatible whether you’re working with the latest macOS or Windows based computer. Learn more about Windows compatibility solutions here ( link). We’re looking for 2TB superfast, extremely rugged, IP67+ rated external solid state drives. That disqualifies the likes of the popular Samsung T7 Touch which is not waterproof.As a result, Microsoft Windows users will discover that the drive doesn’t appear if they connect it, even if they have Thunderbolt ports. Given that the drive is HFS+ formatted out of the box, you will have to reformat the G-Drive to use it with Windows 10, which implies a detour via Computer Management to launch Disk Management and create the partition. Once that was done, we managed to reach a real life performance (moving a single 10GB file using Windows Explorer) of just under 400MBps while various benchmarks (AJA, CDM, ATTO and AS SSD) show that the write speeds ranged between 947 and 1041MBps while the read speeds reached up to 1064. Not bad at all. Not surprisingly, the drive comes with a three-year limited warranty, plus a pair of USB Type-C cables and extra plugs for mainland Europe territories. The interface on the PRO-G40 is more sophisticated, as it can handle Thunderbolt and USB, not just Thunderbolt. And the PRO-G40 has the same 2TB maximum capacity and much greater crush resistance, offers waterproofing and is smaller.