Customer Reviews

G-Tech 913003-01 G-Drive 500GB Quad-Interface External Hard Drive

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

The product design fits very well with the iMAC which it is connected to. The drive operates as expected and has a fairly low noise level (no fan cooling). After power safe mode it takes a bit to get back up to speed - this can be managed using the power management settings and adjusted such that it doesn't interfere with normal operations. All in all I'm very pleased with the device. I have only used the firewire 800 connection, which works well. By the way - the drive comes with cables for all 4 of it's connection options!.
Excellent product - would buy again and recommend.

Bought this drive to work with Apple 10.5 Time Machine. It has worked flawlessly. If you read the Apple discussions on other drives and their problems with time machine, you will see that this drive is what you want if you are going to run Leopard. It also has a good reputation for reliability.

As a back-up drive for an iMac this product is very user-friendly.
It is VERY painless to set-up with Time Machine via Firewire.
It comes Mac formatted. Plug and Play as advertised. The initial backup could take hours. Be prepared.
It is very quiet.
Aesthetically it well designed.
It does use some CPU when it does it's periodic backups. If you have an older iMac (I have a G5), there is a slight slowing in some functions.
Don't buy any cables! It comes with everything you need.
I have't had any quality issues. -On a rare occasion (3 times in 7 weeks) I get a "back-up failure" message from Time Machine. I have just flipped 'power-off' switch on the drive for 10 seconds, then back on. (So, far it has just happened while I have been performing resource-intense work. I wonder if it is a computer issue.)

Too bad Apple hasn't enabled Airport/Wireless backup for Time Machine (without buying Time Capsule). That is another story.

A great small external storage very fast and best of all very quite . you may find a lesser priced storage but 500 Quad- interface is worth every cent.

I have been using G-Tech drives for many years and it's probably the only drive maufacture I trust.
(and I've tried many many other drives), I just read a 1 star review that someone gave and after using them so many years with hundreds of 'improper' disconnections, power failures and 'Hard' shut down, I didn't experience any problems whatsoever, I also had great experience with customer service after I formated one of the drive and couldn't reformat again, after 2.5 years I sent it back to them and they fixed the problem in no time.

I read the reviews before I purchased this. I was satisfied that most were happy with their purchase. And I am now happy too. If you have a mac, it's a breeze. Plug it in and do it!

Pulled this drive out of the box, set it on desktop, plugged it in and it worked for my iMac (Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)) without doing anything more. With Firewire 800 connection, it did first full backup quickly. Transitioned to Leopard and it was very easy to use with Time Machine in Mac OS X 10.5. So far, performs as advertised. Pleased with purchase.

Works seemlessly with Mac, stacks nicely (I own 3), and in the last 2 or so years I've never had any problems with this or the 250 GB version.

I bought it on a recommendation from a colleague who, working at a photography school, has seen other drives just die. They stressed the importance of the internal fan as heat can = death to hard drives.

I purchased this drive, my 5th of its kind, in July 2009. These have proved very reliable and well built in the past and very flexible. Have used these for both Mac and Windows in the past and this last one was to be reformatted to NTFS format for use with Windows. This has not been a problem in the past since it only required a simple reformatting on a Windows computer. Not so with this last drive. G-Tech has apparently determined that most of its customers are Mac based, so they have added a new "feature" which prevents the drive from being easily reformatted to a non-Mac format. There was no information regarding this with the drive or its instructions, nor any apparent change in the advertising that it works for both Mac and Windows--it arrived with exactly the same info as the previous 4 drives. The only info I could find on the G-Tech website suggested that now Windows users would just have to buy and use a third party application such as MacDrive which allows Windows to write to Mac formatted drives. Rather bogus. A Google of the problem did come up with a way to remove this "lock" that worked well and did allow me to reformat the drive to NTFS, so no real problem. However, this does make it a bit more difficult than a simple reformatting and some users may not wish to go there, so be forewarned.

It seems that this drive, the Q (quad 4 port), is being discontinued in favor of one that has only 3 ports--they are loosing the firewire 400 port and including a firewire 400 to 800 cable instead. In their advertising of the new replacement, they state "A simple initialization is all it takes to prepare G-DRIVE for use with Windows® systems". Don't know what that entails, but wish they had been a little more informative regarding the change on this last G-Drive Q that I purchased.

I also need to report that this drive failed after about 40 to 60 hours of scanning photos that were saved to the drive. I started getting warning messages and then the drive could not be seen by either a Windows or Mac computer. I had no access to rescan, so panic ensued. Luckily, when the unit cooled off, the data was still there and it worked long enough for me to back up the files before it started failing again. I called G-Tech and the service tech was very helpful. Sent the drive in, they replaced an interface card, tested it, and returned it promptly without any data loss. This was a very good customer service experience.

Prior to this, I would have given the drive 5 stars instead of just 4 stars. Hope Hitachi, the new owner of G-Technology, can maintain the quality G-Tech has been known for in the past.

ADDENDUM AND RATING CHANGE (4 months and 3 drives later . . .) Well, I have changed my 4 star rating to a one star I'm sorry to have to say. I wrote the previous review after getting off the phone with a service tech at G-Technology who had just informed me that my repaired drive with recovered files was being shipped overnight. Well, it arrived DOA--neither a Mac OS X or Windows XP could see the drive with firewire 800, 400, or USB, so it was returned. The next drive was the new Generation 4 drive and worked fine for about 2 weeks then became "invisible" to both Windows and Mac computers using firewire 800 after some fairly heavy use (unit became warm). After a short period I tried USB and that worked for one session and then quit working (on 2 Windows computers and 1 Mac). I then tried the new firewire 800 to 400 cable on another Windows computer and that worked. I then tried the unit back on the computer it had failed on using fw800 and USB, and now all was working. CONCLUSION: THIS THIRD DRIVE WAS UNRELIABLE. (heat and/or component problem ???)

Now after trying to deal further with the service department and their untimely or no response (and missed promises as to when repaired units were being shipped, etc.), I must find another external drive manufacturer that makes a product as reliable as the G-Tech Q USED TO BE and one that has a more responsive service department.

It seems that since Hitachi has taken over G-Tech, the products and customer service has suffered and gone from a 5 star highly recommended product to a one star "be very wary of" product, with the new Gen 4 version the "G-drive", highly questionable. I must apologize to my friends and the businesses I have recommended this product to and hope they have not had to deal with the problems of the new units.

RIP original G-Tech, my older 4 drives are still great.

This product is simple awesome. I have owned several different external drives. LaCie, Maxtor to name a few and had problems with all of them. Worn out buses, fans, and flat out poor design. G-Tech got it right. This product rocks!
Seamlessly integrated with my G5 Mac right out of the box. Thanks to MacWorld for their great consumer reviews. They got it right in big way.