Price : Too low to display
Professional External Hard Drive: G-DRIVE high-speed interface external storage systems offer the ultimate in flexibility by providing 3Gbit eSATA, FireWire 800 (FireWire 400 via included cable) and USB 2.0 ports. G-DRIVE is the perfect high-performance solution for storage intensive applications including audio/video editing, digital photography, MP3 libraries and high-speed data backup. The system features a fan-less cooling system and the latest technology 7200 RPM SATA II hard drives with up to 2TB in storage capacity with up to 32 MB of cache. G-DRIVE supports professional music production tools including Pro Tools, Logic Studio, Cubase, Nuendo, Digital Performer, and many more. Easy to Setup – Time Machine ready! G-DRIVE is formatted at the factory HFS+ with Journaling and is Time Machine ready right out of the box! A simple initialization is all it takes to prepare G-DRIVE for use with Windows systems!
This review is from : G-Technology G-DRIVE 3TB External Hard Drive w/ eSATA, USB 2.0, Firewire 400, Firewire 800 Interfaces 0G01973
Mac Users -No Brainer . This appears to be the second review here now from the mac side- it's a no brainer for mac users (as I'd read for the 2TB G-Drive when I first started buying these). I'd had mixed luck with the much cheaper Fantom drives- some worked fine and my last order I had to return due to quirky formatting and even quirkier copying via my eSATA card- and I got the ones that were supposed to have the 'better components' whatever that means. These have been nothing but easy and flawless. I choke a little on the price which is quickly forgotten when they arrive and work seamless via any connection (build quality and other features have all been elaborated on by other users and are impeccable) and I sleep at night. After a day of panic over possibly losing 350gigs of Canon 5D Mark 2 images on my last (ever) Fantom experiment to save money (copied to two of 'em for redundancy) and finally coaxing the data to copy back via USB I decided to stick with these (this is my third pair- the other four are the 2TB drives and I decided to try the 3TB). Don't know about reliability but data is copied to two of 'em. I love 'em. Summary: if it's stuff you want to keep (and you can afford them) it appears you get what you pay for. I'm very happy.
Mac Users -No Brainer . This appears to be the second review here now from the mac side- it's a no brainer for mac users (as I'd read for the 2TB G-Drive when I first started buying these). I'd had mixed luck with the much cheaper Fantom drives- some worked fine and my last order I had to return due to quirky formatting and even quirkier copying via my eSATA card- and I got the ones that were supposed to have the 'better components' whatever that means. These have been nothing but easy and flawless. I choke a little on the price which is quickly forgotten when they arrive and work seamless via any connection (build quality and other features have all been elaborated on by other users and are impeccable) and I sleep at night. After a day of panic over possibly losing 350gigs of Canon 5D Mark 2 images on my last (ever) Fantom experiment to save money (copied to two of 'em for redundancy) and finally coaxing the data to copy back via USB I decided to stick with these (this is my third pair- the other four are the 2TB drives and I decided to try the 3TB). Don't know about reliability but data is copied to two of 'em. I love 'em. Summary: if it's stuff you want to keep (and you can afford them) it appears you get what you pay for. I'm very happy.
G-Technology G-DRIVE 3TB External Hard Drive w/ eSATA, USB 2.0, Firewire 400, Firewire 800 Interfaces 0G01973 Reviews
This made my inner nerd sing! . When I first saw this 3TB hard drive at the Apple store I was so excited! A complete nerd moment, and then when I found it here on Amazon I was even happier.
I've tried the 3TB Western Digital, and the 3 TB Passport, and I really dislike them both. They cause problems at boot-up, so I have to remember to unplug them before I turn my computer on, and then plug them back in after I boot up. They disconnect all the time, and I haven't even touched them, it drives me insane! I am neurotic about backing up, I even rotate my backups off-site. With my previous backups, I was really nervous moving them because the boxes say they shouldn't be used as a portable hard drive. When I asked about that at the store the gentleman said the disks move even when they aren't plugged in, great, so how are you supposed to rotate them, and get them off-site?
Well you don't have to worry about that with this hard drive. It has never caused my computer to lock-up when I boot-up, it has never dismounted, and I feel safe rotating it to my off-site back up. I love this hard-drive!
This made my inner nerd sing! . When I first saw this 3TB hard drive at the Apple store I was so excited! A complete nerd moment, and then when I found it here on Amazon I was even happier.
I've tried the 3TB Western Digital, and the 3 TB Passport, and I really dislike them both. They cause problems at boot-up, so I have to remember to unplug them before I turn my computer on, and then plug them back in after I boot up. They disconnect all the time, and I haven't even touched them, it drives me insane! I am neurotic about backing up, I even rotate my backups off-site. With my previous backups, I was really nervous moving them because the boxes say they shouldn't be used as a portable hard drive. When I asked about that at the store the gentleman said the disks move even when they aren't plugged in, great, so how are you supposed to rotate them, and get them off-site?
Well you don't have to worry about that with this hard drive. It has never caused my computer to lock-up when I boot-up, it has never dismounted, and I feel safe rotating it to my off-site back up. I love this hard-drive!
G-Technology G-DRIVE 3TB External Hard Drive w/ eSATA, USB 2.0, Firewire 400, Firewire 800 Interfaces 0G01973 Opinions
My Experience With The G Drive 3TB . My 3TB G Drive arrived today and I was very keen on setting it up right away to test its eSATA transfer speed on my Win 7 64-bit workstation PC. Firstly, I checked over the shipment box after the UPS delivery and it was in fine condition but when I opened it up I saw that the bubble wrap was only placed in two layers on the top of the unit box instead of being wrapped around it to help protect the drive during shipment. Anyhow, it powered up fine but things were a bit confusing for me as the instructions on the included CD for Windows users to format this MAC OS drive and mount it for formatting purposes were not all that clear. So, I called G Drive tech support right away and got a very helpful person on line within a couple of minutes and he stepped me through the process which included having to go through the command prompt to isolate and "clean" the drive in preparation for mounting and formatting it for Windows' usage. However, to get to this point I had to switch from my initial eSATA connection to the provided USB 2 cable for Windows to see the drive as the drive could not be recognized otherwise.
I then rebooted with the eSATA cable connection to the G Drive but Windows would still not recognize the newly NTFS formatted drive so I called Tech Support again and got another helpful man on the phone. He concurred with the original person that I had followed the right formatting protocol but I was still unable to see the Drive in Windows Explorer unless I switched to the USB 2 connection and it popped up right away. Anyhow, he asked me to check out the drive on any other system at work with an eSATA connection and left it at that as he may have suspected my PC's eSATA ports.
I have another eSATA device (a BluRay burner) plugged in and I've had connectivity with that so I just kept rebooting my PC with various combinations (both eSATA units on/off, etc.) until suddenly a Windows message popped up saying it's installing a driver for the G Drive unit. I'm not sure why this message didn't pop up during my earlier attempts but I checked Windows Explorer and was not able to see the drive again. Finally, I had some success by re-scanning my disk arrays through Disk Management and then I could see both my eSATA units. I proceeded to copy a 36 GB block of information (over 2,700 video and image files in 107 folders) from my SCSCI RAID 0 (4, Seagate 72GB Cheetahs) drive array and the process completed in 5 minutes which works out to 120 MB/s, which is in the range of what I was told to expect with this 64MB cache 7200RPM Hitachi drive.
I loved the speed of the drive but however, in the time it took me to type the above, I again clicked on the G Drive showing in my Windows Explorer window but found it had dismounted on its own with the window hanging and a few attempts to re-scan my drives to re-locate it were unsuccessful though the drive is still running. Powering it on and off didn't help either so I'm calling Tech Support again as I'm not sure if it's a Win 7 64-bit issue or the software within the G Drive itself. I'll do an update when I find out more.
First Update:
I called Tech Support again to see if they may know of any solutions to keep my G Drive connected and online through eSATA alone and a different Tech Support person tried to help me with trouble-shooting this issue. He had me switch over to the Firewire cable and instantly Windows picked up the drive so we began to isolate the problem to my moterboard's eSATA chip software. I put my PC to sleep for the night with the G Drive off and the Firewire connection in place and when I returned to work this morning I woke the PC up and turned on the G Drive and it was picked up immediately. The only problem is that I really want to get this stability with the eSATA connection as transfering the same 36GB block of files took about 30 minutes through the Firewire 400 port on my PC, six times as long. In the meantime, I began researching more online and I believe the issue may lie with the outdated Marvel driver I have on my ASUS P5E WS Pro motherboard which is about five years old now. I've downloaded the updated driver file and I'll try that this morning as at least one person online seemed to have success with much the same board.
I bumped up my earlier rating of the G Drive by one star today as I see the loss of drive connection issue may well be with outdated drivers on my system that Win 7 64bit SP 1 with all its updates has failed to address. Hopefully, this will fix the eSATA issue and then I'd like to really put the G Drive through its paces and move it up to a full five-star rating if it holds up, as its speed, portability, and connectivity options are exactly what I'm needing for my workflow. I earlier tried out a new Seagate 3TB external drive with a USB 3 connection but I was unable to get the USB3-PCIe add-in card to fit safely in my only available PCIe slot as it's adjacent to my 64bit SCSI controller card whose hardware and data ribbon cables stick out quite a bit over this area and would be damaged by the sharp, soldered points sticking out of the back of the add-in card.
2nd. Update:
After several failed attempts to work successfully and consistently with my G Drive connected to my onboard eSATA ports I decided to pick up a PCI-eSATA card and I'm testing that out now as WIN 7 installed the necessary driver. So far so good regarding the drive not dropping connection during long transfers and being able to access the still image file and video content on it without things freezing up and getting a BSOD. However, I've noticed that write speeds have been dropping off from my initial 120MBps to around 75 - 65MBps (as of course the fastest part of the drive, the outer periphery gets copied onto first), however this is still a lot nicer than the 20MBps I was getting with USB2 and with Firewire 400, the other two connections on my PC.
The build construction of the G Drive enclosure seems very solid and I was able to pick it up on Amazon for about $90 cheaper than the local Fry's Electronics.
My Experience With The G Drive 3TB . My 3TB G Drive arrived today and I was very keen on setting it up right away to test its eSATA transfer speed on my Win 7 64-bit workstation PC. Firstly, I checked over the shipment box after the UPS delivery and it was in fine condition but when I opened it up I saw that the bubble wrap was only placed in two layers on the top of the unit box instead of being wrapped around it to help protect the drive during shipment. Anyhow, it powered up fine but things were a bit confusing for me as the instructions on the included CD for Windows users to format this MAC OS drive and mount it for formatting purposes were not all that clear. So, I called G Drive tech support right away and got a very helpful person on line within a couple of minutes and he stepped me through the process which included having to go through the command prompt to isolate and "clean" the drive in preparation for mounting and formatting it for Windows' usage. However, to get to this point I had to switch from my initial eSATA connection to the provided USB 2 cable for Windows to see the drive as the drive could not be recognized otherwise.
I then rebooted with the eSATA cable connection to the G Drive but Windows would still not recognize the newly NTFS formatted drive so I called Tech Support again and got another helpful man on the phone. He concurred with the original person that I had followed the right formatting protocol but I was still unable to see the Drive in Windows Explorer unless I switched to the USB 2 connection and it popped up right away. Anyhow, he asked me to check out the drive on any other system at work with an eSATA connection and left it at that as he may have suspected my PC's eSATA ports.
I have another eSATA device (a BluRay burner) plugged in and I've had connectivity with that so I just kept rebooting my PC with various combinations (both eSATA units on/off, etc.) until suddenly a Windows message popped up saying it's installing a driver for the G Drive unit. I'm not sure why this message didn't pop up during my earlier attempts but I checked Windows Explorer and was not able to see the drive again. Finally, I had some success by re-scanning my disk arrays through Disk Management and then I could see both my eSATA units. I proceeded to copy a 36 GB block of information (over 2,700 video and image files in 107 folders) from my SCSCI RAID 0 (4, Seagate 72GB Cheetahs) drive array and the process completed in 5 minutes which works out to 120 MB/s, which is in the range of what I was told to expect with this 64MB cache 7200RPM Hitachi drive.
I loved the speed of the drive but however, in the time it took me to type the above, I again clicked on the G Drive showing in my Windows Explorer window but found it had dismounted on its own with the window hanging and a few attempts to re-scan my drives to re-locate it were unsuccessful though the drive is still running. Powering it on and off didn't help either so I'm calling Tech Support again as I'm not sure if it's a Win 7 64-bit issue or the software within the G Drive itself. I'll do an update when I find out more.
First Update:
I called Tech Support again to see if they may know of any solutions to keep my G Drive connected and online through eSATA alone and a different Tech Support person tried to help me with trouble-shooting this issue. He had me switch over to the Firewire cable and instantly Windows picked up the drive so we began to isolate the problem to my moterboard's eSATA chip software. I put my PC to sleep for the night with the G Drive off and the Firewire connection in place and when I returned to work this morning I woke the PC up and turned on the G Drive and it was picked up immediately. The only problem is that I really want to get this stability with the eSATA connection as transfering the same 36GB block of files took about 30 minutes through the Firewire 400 port on my PC, six times as long. In the meantime, I began researching more online and I believe the issue may lie with the outdated Marvel driver I have on my ASUS P5E WS Pro motherboard which is about five years old now. I've downloaded the updated driver file and I'll try that this morning as at least one person online seemed to have success with much the same board.
I bumped up my earlier rating of the G Drive by one star today as I see the loss of drive connection issue may well be with outdated drivers on my system that Win 7 64bit SP 1 with all its updates has failed to address. Hopefully, this will fix the eSATA issue and then I'd like to really put the G Drive through its paces and move it up to a full five-star rating if it holds up, as its speed, portability, and connectivity options are exactly what I'm needing for my workflow. I earlier tried out a new Seagate 3TB external drive with a USB 3 connection but I was unable to get the USB3-PCIe add-in card to fit safely in my only available PCIe slot as it's adjacent to my 64bit SCSI controller card whose hardware and data ribbon cables stick out quite a bit over this area and would be damaged by the sharp, soldered points sticking out of the back of the add-in card.
2nd. Update:
After several failed attempts to work successfully and consistently with my G Drive connected to my onboard eSATA ports I decided to pick up a PCI-eSATA card and I'm testing that out now as WIN 7 installed the necessary driver. So far so good regarding the drive not dropping connection during long transfers and being able to access the still image file and video content on it without things freezing up and getting a BSOD. However, I've noticed that write speeds have been dropping off from my initial 120MBps to around 75 - 65MBps (as of course the fastest part of the drive, the outer periphery gets copied onto first), however this is still a lot nicer than the 20MBps I was getting with USB2 and with Firewire 400, the other two connections on my PC.
The build construction of the G Drive enclosure seems very solid and I was able to pick it up on Amazon for about $90 cheaper than the local Fry's Electronics.
3 TB G Drive . Works flawlessly, huge storage capacity, comes with cables for all connection interfaces, works right out of the box, using with Mac and parallels/windows systems
Great speed just wish the light would dim . This drive is speedy for read/write. It gives me the space I need and has performed stoutly over the past three months of regular use.I share it as a networked drive and multiple PC's access the contents at a time.I only wish the white light behind the G on the front of the unit were toned down a bit, especially when the drive is spun down and idle. Had to rectify that by hiding the drive from sight. I was hesitant to pull the trigger on this drive, but my firewire video editing needs helped me pull the trigger. Enjoying it immensely.
A really good backup drive . Over the years I've had several hard drives. This one is solidly built and was unbelievably easy to set up. No software, just plug it in to the firewire drive and the icon shows up on the desktop and stays there! (Unlike other drives that needed to be restarted after my iMac woke up from sleep mode.) And what it does is sit there and receive data, including Time Machine; no muss, no fuss and no maintenance needed. The only quibbles are the slight whir of the drive and the "on" light which is too bright; a tiny LED would have done fine. After only a month, it's a little early to tell -- but this is probably the best hard drive I've owned..G-Technology G-DRIVE 3TB External Hard Drive w/ eSATA, USB 2.0, Firewire 400, Firewire 800 Interfaces 0G01973Joe Graphics, Memphis.
Great Drive . This is my second drive, I filled it in a matter of a week. Might have to buy another to continue with my projects. Highly recommended. Firewire 800 is key.
Well worth the price of admission . I needed a new external drive to store my ripped video collection, which had almost outgrown my 2TB drive. I wanted something that was built well, fast, and with multiple types of connections to connect to my iMac. The aluminum casing is a perfect match, the whole unit is very solid, and data transfer is fast (I am using FW800). I was a little disappointed that the G-Tech had not been updated to USB3.0, but since my iMac (as well as all other Apple product at the moment) only has USB2.0 I decided to go for it anyway. It is a little larger than you might expect, but that is probably to aid in cooling (there is a large heatsink on the bottom). I am very impressed. Yes it is on the expensive side compared to others of the same capacity (most of which are cheap plastic and use slow USB2.0 only), but your data is valuable, so it is worth it to spend the extra money for quality.
Cons Review
WARNING! Does not work with Windows XP . Even though the product listing says "System Requirements: Mac OSX 10.3.x or higher or Windows 2000/XP/Vista", this drive does NOT work with Windows XP. If you connect it to a system running Windows XP it will not even come up in the Disk Manager. This is not just because it comes formatted for Mac; it would be easy enough to clean and re-partition if the drive appeared in the Disk Manager. It is due to technical limitations in Windows XP which prevent it from seeing drives larger than 2.2TB. Amazon, the listing should be updated to show that this drive is not compatible with Windows XP. A pity. I have a 2TB G-Drive which works fine.
Not a Good Match for Windows 7 . It comes formatted for Mac. I formatted it for Windows 7 and no matter what I did could not get the use of more than 2 TB. I realize that's still large, but I paid for a 3TB drive and that's what I wanted. Contacted LaCie and they said it was defective. I don't think so because it worked fine. I didn't want to try another.
Product Image
Feature G-Technology G-DRIVE 3TB External Hard Drive w/ eSATA, USB 2.0, Firewire 400, Firewire 800 Interfaces 0G01973
- 3TB External Hard Drive Storage Capacity for Mac
- 3Gbit eSATA, Firewire 400, FireWire 800 and USB 2.0 connectivity
- Integrated heat-sink provides near silent operation and ensures proper cooling for long life and data reliability
- Unique industrial design, compact all aluminum enclosure
- Time Machine Ready!
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Product Details
EAN : 0705487186802UPC : 705487186802
MPN : 0G01973
Brand : G-Tech
Color : Silver
Weight : 5 pounds
Height : 5 inches
Length : 12 inches
Width : 10 inches
Binding : Personal Computers
Manufacturer : Hitachi
Model : 0G01973
Publisher : Hitachi
SKU : 705487186802
Studio : Hitachi
Where To Buy
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