Not sure how those economics work for you, but if you don’t mind voiding the warranty, this pricing makes it a little cheaper to buy a 4TB model and a retail 18TB drive and swap them than buy the 18TB option. That’s a cost reduction from the previous G-DRIVE Desktop design and dramatically cheaper than the PRO model that uses a Thunderbolt connection. Why they provide such a high-quality cable is a mystery because the physical hard drives in this series can’t manage 2Mbit/s transfers going downhill on a windy day.

With dimensions of 130.4 x 71.5 x 16mm, the Pro-Blade Transport is larger than alternatives like the SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable SSD V2 and Samsung T9. However, the Mags themselves are compact (129 x 103.6 x 14.4mm) and multiple units can be used interchangeably with a single Transport.Since this drive is only USB Gen 3.2 Gen 2 capable, there are many brands and products that offer the same capacities and performance levels for significantly less. The issue here is that the designers of the PRO-G40 evidently decided that the NVMe inside would be the SN750 SE, and that doesn’t come in 4TB. The new design has more plastic and less metal, but this hardware is still substantially a heatsink, and our review model weighed 1323g with the 12TB drive inside. Presuming that the drive has some thermal interface to the enclosures metal case, this design should be able to effectively radiate heat from the hard drive inside should it be operated over an extended period.

For those purchasing the G-DRIVE SSD for their Apple Mac, all they need to do is connect it to a recent Apple Mac computer, as the drive is pre-formatted with APFS. We’re not at the point where SSD storage compares to this solution in terms of cost per GB and sizes available, but eventually, it will happen. The smaller capacities in this range will soon be consumed by the ever-decreasing cost of NAND flash, although the largest models will likely still offer a good cost-per-GB option for a few more years. For those wondering if the enclosure could be repurposed, there appears to be no obvious way inside. And, while it might be possible to dismantle, there are no guarantees that the NAND flash module inside uses a standard M.2 slot. One area it does shine is that the NVMe inside has the capability for 256-bit AES-XTS hardware encryption, enabling the contents of the drive to be secured effectively.What’s nice about the Pro=Blade Station is that the power connection is USB-C, and the unit has two Thunderbolt ports allowing it to daisy chain other Thunderbolt hardware.

Maybe G-DRIVE hardware is mostly bought by Apple owners, or they don’t think that Apple users could work out how to reformat and so burdened Windows users with that job. Why they didn’t just format it with something both systems would understand isn’t obvious.

Game Smarter

Where can you get it?Widely available from the larger online retailers in most regions and directly from Western Digital.