G-Drive Mobile Pro SSD Portable Hard Drive REVIEW

I am a huge fan of portable storage. I think it really makes our current mode of living (on-the-go) possible. I have a 2016 MacBook Pro. It has 250GB of flash storage installed, which is twice as much as what I had on my previous laptop. Still, when you are dealing with media files (photo, video, audio, etc.), that space is a premium. And, if you happen to have a drive failure, then what? With that in mind, I’ve become a huge fan of keeping a portable drive with me. I like having the flexibility of doing a quick backup or accessing archived files when I’m on-the-go. I’ve primarily been using mechanical drives recently. They are historically more affordable and they get the job done. That said, I am very happy to be able to upgrade to a mobile SSD with the G-Drive Mobile Pro SSD portable hard drive.

DETAILS

SPECS

  • Interface: Thunderbolt 3 port
  • Transfer Rate: Up to 2800MB/s
  • Compatibility: MacOS 10.13+, Windows® 10 (via reformat)
  • Dimensions: 4.41” x 3.15” x 0.67” / 112 x 80 x 17 mm

Kit Contents

  • G-DRIVE mobile Pro SSD
  • 1 x .5m Thunderbolt 3 Cable (40Gbps)
  • Quick Start Guide

USER EXPERIENCE

Once I connected the drive using the provided Thunderbolt 3 cable, I opened the System Profiler on my computer and looked at the storage availability. The G-Drive SSD appeared normally and showed that it had 503.13GB of 499.76GB available. There were no system files stored on the drive out of the box and Disk Utility showed that 499.32GB of space was available. The System Profiler also identified that the connection is PCI-Express and that the drive was pre-formatted as MacOS Extended.

At this point, I began testing the drive’s transfer speeds. As a matter of practice, I use three methods to test this function when I check out a hard drive: Blackmagic Speed Test, AJA Speed Test, and a simple data transfer timed with a stopwatch.

Blackmagic Speed Test result: 1102.4 MBs WRITE/2324.0 MBs READ

AJA Speed Test results: This test allows you to test specific video formats so that you can judge if this drive will work for your purposes. I will usually only test a drive at 1080P and 4K Full, but since this was a Thunderbolt 3 capable drive, I also tested the 5K Red format.

1080P — 1442 WRITE1735 READ MBs

4K Full (4096×3112) 16GB File Size: 1121 WRITE2307 READ MBs

5K Red (5120×2700) 64GB File Size: 902 WRITE2311 READ MBs

I never had any heat issues with this drive, even after running these stress tests. The drive has remained cool to the touch. Its case is very durable and easy to use.

CONCLUSIONS

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Originally published at macsources.com on January 15, 2019.

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MacSources

Mac Sources is an Information and Technology Company. We review all things technology-related. Our team also reports on tech news happening in the world. 