Overall, this is a very nicely engineered and constructed external drive that looks able to cope with abuse that might be expected to kill those external SSDs that are made mostly of plastic.

And while it does both those things admirably, it also makes the unit heavy and unsuitable to put in a laptop bag with a computer. With its external PSU, sharp edges and multiple USB cables, this drive needs its own bag for carrying, and it isn’t that portable. It has been fine-tuned to deliver cooler temperatures in use and targets NAS users. Usage and performance The milled aluminum and rubberized coating provide a sturdy home for the NAND module mounted inside the SanDisk Professional G-DRIVE SSD. The new design has more plastic and less metal, but this hardware is still substantially a heatsink, and our review model weighed 1323g with the 12TB drive inside. For our own folder transfer test, we use a MacBook Pro laptop. This drag-and-drop test consists of copying a standard 1.2GB folder from the Mac to the test drive, with a stopwatch showing how long it took to finish the job.

Thank you!

G-Drive Pro has a solid, anodized aluminum enclosure. Not only does it look good but it offers robust protection for the Enterprise Class Drive inside. And, competing against its own products, Western Digital makes the excellent My Book Duo, where the 16TB drive (2 x 8TB) is a little more than the 18TB G-DRIVE Desktop Drive but offers a resilient mirroring option and allows the users to change the drives. As this design doesn’t have the Thunderbolt daisy-chain functionality of the PRO, to have more than one of these connected requires multiple USB ports or at least a hub.

The included cable is only 20cm long and made explicitly for Thunderbolt 3.0 and its repurposed USB-C interface. Currently, there are five capacity options for the new G-DRIVE Desktop Drive that include 4TB, 6TB, 12TB, 18TB and 22 TB drives. Although it was launched more than a year ago, the G-Drive is still very much competitive with rivals launched in 2017. It is fast, reasonably well built, compatible with Apple products and has a faster implementation of USB Type-C.One area it does shine is that the NVMe inside has the capability for 256-bit AES-XTS hardware encryption, enabling the contents of the drive to be secured effectively. For your demanding workloads and high-value content, you can rely on the power and enhanced reliability of the 7200RPM Ultrastar enterprise-class hard drive inside. As a USB drive, these numbers are solid and equivalent to those that we’ve seen from the Crucial X8 and its like. There are faster USB drives that use the USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 standard, such as the PNY EliteX-PRO and Kingston XS2000. For those curious, Thunderbolt-connected SSDs can be three times these speeds, something to consider for those that have that port and can afford those drives.

For those purchasing the G-DRIVE SSD for their Apple Mac, all they need to do is connect it to a recent Apple Mac computer, as the drive is pre-formatted with APFS. Being able to read or write at these high levels is helpful for those that need to get on a plane or train or have other time pressures on them.With a premium, anodized aluminum enclosure, the G-DRIVE pairs beautifully with your high-end computer and gives you durable strength you can feel. The features of the SanDisk Professional G-Drive PRO will be familiar to those that have experienced any of the SanDisk Professional SSD products recently. SanDisk’s chosen connection technology is USB-C, and a 1m long cable rated for 20Mbit transfers is included in the box with the drive and PSU. When you compare the cost to that of a bare mechanism and a simple USB enclosure, the G-DRIVE Desktop Drive is one of the more expensive ways to get extra space, and it's also relatively slow compared to SSD drives. That you can buy two Crucial X8 for the price of a single SanDisk Professional SSD that isn’t any faster suggests that either Crucial is underselling its line or SanDisk has entirely lost the pricing plot.