Review: G-Technology G-Drive Thunderbolt 3 8TB

Performance and Summary

One cannot reasonably expect supreme performance from a single mechanical hard drive, and connected via Thunderbolt 3, the G-Drive manages respectable read and write speeds. In fact, real-world speed is a bit better, evidenced by transferring 52.6GB in 4m 35s, putting it close to a sustained 200MB/s. This, we imagine, is the sort of workload that G-Technology has in mind - creative types transferring huge files to-and-fro.

Our second benchmark involves two scenarios; copying across a folder containing large files such as ISOs; and copying across a program folder full of various small files. Here, the G-Drive does well, easily beating out other spindle-based drives. The underlying HGST spinner even manages to hold its own against a few SSDs.

Summary

G-Technology is not a name many are familiar with but it's backed by WD, arguably the biggest name in the storage business. The premium consumer line now adopts the latest Thunderbolt standard in a smart, well-presented enclosure housing mechanical drives up to 12TB is size.

All good, right? Not quite, as the price premium for including a Thunderbolt 3 controller and a top-spec drive pushes the 8TB review model out to an improbable $529 (£430). And one can argue that the masses of bandwidth provided by TB3 is largely wasted here, useful only if you have to daisy-chain a number of devices together. Last but not least, the 7,200rpm drive vibrates loudly even when idle.

Bottom line: there are plenty of fast and spacious external hard drives on the market. G-Technology's G-Drive is good in some respects and merely average in others.

HEXUS.where2buy

The G-Technology G-Drive Thunderbolt 3 8TB external drive is available to purchase from Amazon.

HEXUS.right2reply

At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.