Customer Reviews

G-Technology G-DRIVE 1TB External Hard Drive w/ eSATA, USB 2.0, Firewire 400, Firewire 800 Interfaces 0G00199

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

With my 300GB drive too small I went shopping for a new 1 TB drive (the first time in 3 years). Over the years, I've bought several Seagate/Lacie externals and Seagate/IBM (now Hitachi) internal drives. Some drives are certainly faster and quieter than others; some are downright annoying but you just can't tell from the specs alone which I why I rely on reviews.

To my dismay, I discovered through my research that every brand/model of drive has received poor reviews. There wasn't a clear choice to make. It would seem that computer reliability has increased to the level that the hard drive is the weak link in the system now. Since my existing external was a Seagate 300GB firewire, I went with a 1TB FreeAgent from Seagate. Boy was that a huge mistake. Users are very unhappy with that product and so was I: it appears that Seagate doesn't build their firewire drives for mac compatibility anymore. If you need firewire, avoid Seagate.

Having a reliable backup drive is more important than ever so I crossed my fingers and went with G-Tech based on its feature set and my previous positive experience with Hitachi drive mechanisms (they own G-Tech).

Enclosure Pros:

- eSATA/FW800/FW400/USB2
- every kind of cable included (a rarity now and a great value for the money)
- large on/off button
- sturdy metal case
- no annoying fan
- the drive mounts to sled with a heat-sink that protrudes from bottom of case for improved cooling
- hundreds of ventilation holes at front and sides of case
- combo power/activity light
- attractive case

Mechanism Pros:

- very quiet drive
- fast 69MB/s read, 58 MB/s write (over FW800 w/ MacBook Pro 2007) - haven't tested eSATA yet
- HFS+ formatted for instant use on Macs

Cons:

- none to date

Some people have complained that the enclosure is larger than the typical upright design (5" x 9 1/4" x 1 3/4"). There are easily larger units to be found out there so I guess the complaint comes down to the fact that the drive is designed to sit horizontally on the table. I've seen the Seagate FreeAgent drives with their flimsy stands forcing you to lay the drive down on the desktop. The WD case seems to have the best design for vertical orientation but I don't think that's important as other features.

I'm very happy with the enclosure (G-Tech: please don't change a thing!). My advice to those that take issue with the size, is to get a G-Tech mini or other tiny USB2 based 2.5" drive. All 3.5" based externals tend to take up desk space one way or another.

Summary:

After buying this unit, I may never buy a drive in a plastic enclosure again. This is a solidly made unit compared to the flimsy offerings on the store shelves today.

This product is a winner: fast, quiet, reliable and cleverly designed. An excellent value.

PS. Why companies like WD even conceive of stuffing two already hot drives into the same raid enclosure with no fan is beyond me. G-Tech has a much better design for a raid enclosure.

I can't recommend this drive. Despite the beautiful case design and build quality, the HD controller has failed and makes it impossible to work on. My Adobe apps crash, the computer freezes, and the drive becomes unresponsive. I'm working to have it replaced by G-Tech. At least their customer service is answering their email, and I'm hopeful the "NEW" design will be better.

For now, I Recommend buying another brand.

UPDATE:
They (finally) sent me a new drive enclosure with my 'old' hard drive installed into it. The new one's working well, although for some reason Retrospect finds it incompatible, as it's always 'busy' and inaccessible. But I've been using it as a boot-drive on a Powerbook and it's been fine.

So the controller problem, which they've been aware of, may be a past issue. Still, I'm done with G-Tech for now. I'm going back to Other World Computing (MacSales) for external drives at reasonable prices.

One word of advice if you DO have a problem: The email support guy is okay but doesn't follow up. I waited for weeks after the drive was promised by email, then phoned them. They person I spoke with saw how long I'd been waiting and got me a NEW device promptly, so CALL them after you've sent in the drive for service.

This drive has had an easy life in my home. However, it began to fail to mount after a few months. I paid to ship it back to G-Tech for repair, and all seemed fine when I got it back. A month later when I went to use it again, it failed to mount AGAIN. I called G-Tech, and they said it was repaired with a faulty part (widespread problem). They said they'd send me an email to get it repaired again. I never got the email, and I haven't been able to get this resolved.

I paid $350 for this drive just over a year ago for reliability. It has been anything but reliable. Even if I do get it repaired again, I will never be able to trust it.

Nice looking drive. That's where the positives end, unfortunately. Mine CONSTANTLY became unresponsive, and not ONCE was it able to complete a full system back-up on my very lightly used, brand-new iMac. I finally stopped attempting to use it completely after it caused several freezes and system crashes. I called G-Tech and described the problem, and they weren't at all surprised.. apparently it's a common problem. So I sent to them to have it repaired/replaced under warranty (I had to pay the shipping), and waited. And waited... And waited. I finally called them today, almost a month and a half later to get an update and it turns out my drive has just been sitting in their lab untouched for over a month-- they haven't even started working on it yet. They will "try" to get to it soon though. All I want now is my money back, but obviously that's not an option for them.
Unreliable product, terrible customer support. Looks can definitely be deceiving.

I purchased these drives because I was looking for a "professional" grade storage solution. They are NOT a professional drive, and I have had better performance and reliability from consumer grade products. The drives unmount randomly, they do not automatically remount, they drop during file transfers or other I/O operations, and they at times remain corrupted requiring repair with hard drive recovery tools. In just a few months of light use (drives used weekly for offline archiving/backups) both drives exhibit some sort of failure within 2-3 hours of use. One drive failed completely and has been replaced. (the replacement service was slow, but they handled the issue well) It breaks my heart that these drives just don't perform relative to their beautiful design, but I can not recommend these drives to anyone. The product forums are also filled with these same type of issues, please be careful before purchasing these products.

I received the drive yesterday afternoon. I have several G-drives 500mb. I bought this drive for the extra space.

I started copying 165 mb of data from the Mac to the new G-Drive. It took over 4 hours. In contrast, it took 20 minutes on the older 500 mb G Drives.

I called G-Technology. First, they had me reboot and power off the drive. I restarted the copy and it started fast and within 2 minutes in slowed to a crawl...another 4 hours.

I called them again this morning and they said that they had been experiencing that problem with the version before this, but not the Gen4, which is what this one is.

I have been a big fan of G-Drive, but it seems as though they have gone down. I noted several complaints online and a person on Creative Cow said he experienced the same problem.

Thank goodness I bought it on Amazon. No hassle return policy.

After the hard drive in my iMac suffered a catastrophic failure, I wanted an external drive to use for Time Machine, but wasn't impressed with Apple's Time Capsule.
This drive was easy to set up for use as a Time Machine drive, and it has proven invaluable for the recovery of files that I have deleted prematurely. It is large enough to partition for use as a scratch drive for my video editing and photography without constraining the Time Machine partition.
I like that the manufacturer is local to me and after talking with them a few times on the phone before the purchase, I am confident that if any issues arise with the drive, I won't have any problems with getting a replacement.

I see quite a few old reviews with bad controllers. So I thought I should put my two cents in. I have had this drive hooked up to my iMac for over two years. In that time it has quietly been backing up my computer with Time Machine every hour the computer is on. I have not had any problems of any kind and find this drive a stylish little work horse. The silver housing matches the iMac perfectly. The fire wire 800 port moves the data very quickly. It makes very little noise. It is in fact far - far quieter than the USB Seagate drive I bought previously. I could not ask for better.

Very fast. What I wanted. I use the FireWire 800 attached to my iMac and use this for a Time Machine backup. Solid as a rock so far (6 weeks). The unit is a lot longer than I anticipated though (about 2 times the length of a 3.5" drive.)

I use this drive as a Time Machine Backup. Aesthetically G drive is amazing, they have a great warranty and the drive has been very reliable thus far. Highly recommended