G-Technology G-Drive Mobile Pro SSD 500GB External Drive Review

1. Introduction2. G-Technology G-Drive mobile Pro SSD 500GB3. Testing Methodology4. CrystalDiskMark5. ATTO6. ASSSD7. Backup / Restore8. Throughput9. Real Life File Transfers10. Closing Thoughts11. View All Pages

G-Technology are Western Digital's brand that offers high-performance storage solutions to meet the demands of the media and entertainment market segments with product lines from external drives for mobile users through to desktop docking stations. The G-Drive Mobile Pro SSD family are the flagship products of G-Technology's extensive range of mobile external drive's and are also branded as part of G-Technology's R-Series (R standing for rugged) drives.

With a combination of a fast performing NVMe SSD and a Thunderbolt 3 interface, the G-Drive mobile Pro SSD has an impressive turn of speed when it comes to Sequential performance. The official maximum transfer rate figure for the drive is up to 2,800MB/s (this is based on read performance). When tested with the ATTO benchmark the reviewed drive returned a read figure of 2,811MB/s. Incidentally the tested write figure was 2,337MB/s, both of these figures making the G-Drive mobile Pro SSD the fastest external drive we have tested to date in terms of throughput.

However the random 4K performance wasn't so impressive, as the drive struggled with the 4K tests in CrystalDiskMark at both shallow and deep queue depths. Then again the G-Drive mobile Pro SSD hasn't been designed to handle small bity file transfers but to move very large media files around and it does that very well.

Designed for the professional user handling 4K and 8K media including multi-stream 8K footage editing, we timed just how quick the drive was transferring these types of file to and from a NVMe SSD (512GB Toshiba OCZ RD400).  A 16GB folder of raw 4K video scenes (8 scenes) took just 9.1 seconds to transfer to the Toshiba drive at 1,205MB/s and 9.9 seconds (1,116MB/s) to write back to the G-Drive mobile Pro SSD. A 40GB folder of 8K video's (11 clips) took a mere 20.4 seconds (1,060MB/s) to transfer to the Toshiba drive and 18 seconds to write back at 1,204MB/s.

As befitting a rugged drive, the G-Drive mobile Pro SSD is housed in a protective rubber-feel enclosure that protects it from a drop of up to 3 meters and a crush force of up to 1000lbs. The enclosure has a number of slots cut into it to help dissipate the heat from the large aluminium heatsink that G-Technology have used to keep the drive cool. This system works well as the drive didn't get beyond warm even when it was being pushed hard during testing.

We found the 500GB version of G-Technology's G-Drive mobile Pro SSD on Span.com for £270.00 (inc VAT) HERE

Pros

• Stunning Sequential performance.
• 5-year warranty.
• Shock protection.

Cons

• 4K random performance is disappointing.

Kitguru says: Designed to shift very large files around very quickly, G-Technology's G-Drive mobile Pro SSD 500GB drive does what it says on the tin, with the added bonus of being able to survive the rough and tumble of everyday life on the move.

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