G-Technology G-DRIVE Q 2TB External Hard Drive w/ eSATA, USB 2.0, Firewire 400, Firewire 800 Interfaces 0G00203
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- G-Technology GD42000 2TB G-drive
2TB Professional hard drive SATA II 7200 RPM INCL TO FW400
Hitachi Hard Drive
G-Technology G-DRIVE Q 2TB External Hard Drive w/ eSATA, USB 2.0, Firewire 400, Firewire 800 Interfaces 0G00203
List Price: $ 329.99
Price:
Worth every penny,
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.
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|Excellent for Apple Computers,
Purchased from Amazon, and have owned MANY external drives. These drives are first rate, from the construction, to the design, to the details, including hidden heat sink under drive. They run warm (not hot), and they behave very well with my Mac Pro. They quickly go to sleep when not in use, and they wake up when the computer calls for them. This is an issue with many external drives. These, on the other hand, are perfectly behaved, very quiet, and fast. I am using them on Firewire 800 for time machine and SuperDuper Clone backups, and they are flawless. SuperDuper Clone can boot system and is a perfect substitute, just as advertised. I have used this method for years, but some of the external drives have let me down. Not these. I have finally finished my long and expensive search for the right external drive. Should have started here in the beginning. Almost forgot… Amazon was the vendor. Nothing needs to be added to that except… Perfect. I will add more as I can afford, to use as external SATA using the 5th and 6th SATA ports on my Mac Motherboard. Been less successful with this with other drives, but I feel good about these drives. One thing, of course… Put a piece of black tape (I used a square piece of black duct tape) on face of white light on drive. It makes the light tolerable. Otherwise it is like headlights from an oncoming car. But the black tape looks factory, and you can still see the light. You’ll understand when you do this.
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|Probably the best on the market,
I bought the 1.5TB G-Drive Q a year ago. The hard drive was always noisy and was slow to respond when idle. But I had nothing to compare it to. Well, the hard drive failed recently and all data on it is probably lost. Check this […] before trusting one of these drives too much. Well, I had already purchased this 2TB G-Drive and was waiting for it to arrive when the other one failed. (If it had only help up for another week I would have copied all the data to the new drive.) The new drive does seem better; it’s nearly silent, can’t hear it at all sitting under the desk, where as, the other one was always very audible whenever it was getting into motion. The new drive has a much more compact power supply with a standard DC connector.
Update: Ops, I posted an external link, I see that is not allowed. It was to the G-Tech support forum. Well, I must add to this review that G-Tech really took care of me in the end. It took a little effort to get a response from them and to get them to understand I needed the data recovered or returned “and” (not “or”) the drive repaired. They recovered the data and sent me a brand new 2TB G-Drive, so I have no complaints. I’d say they are dedicated to customer satisfaction even if they don’t always get it right the first time.
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