Customer Reviews and Ratings

I was one of the very first to buy the original G-Tech 2TB hard drive, and had until recently been a happy owner of several G-Tech drives, thinking I'd finally found a reliable manufacturer. One of my G-Tech 2TB drives crashed. G-Tech does not repair drives, only replaces them, so I sent it to a third party for testing. Internally, the drive consists of two 1-TB drives configured in a RAID-0 (striped) configuration. There had been a hard failure of one of the drives. The disk head was actually scraping the drive surface. Since the default configuration is striped - part of a file gets written to one drive and part to the other - complications arise. Due to this complexity, the estimate to recover the data is $3,400 if the data can be recovered at all. I didn't mind paying a premium for G-Tech drives thinking NEC drives would be reliable, but experience has taught me otherwise. Does anyone make reliable drives any more?

13 of 20 people found this useful

Nice looking drive.
Extruded case design and thorough ventilation holes provide good cooling.

Only issues are minor and don't affect performance.

1) Like all small fans, there is a slight sound but not terribly loud.
(Time will tell if the fan lasts longer than most small fans.)

2) HD access light on front is white and bright. If you leave your drive on 24/7 in a bedroom, this could be an issue.

9 of 10 people found this useful

just bought easy setup right out of box extremely fast backups quiet firewire much better then usb.
complaint about light is true very bright so far happy with decision

13 of 15 people found this useful

I've been using G-Drives for the last 7 years, and I've never had an issue!

33 of 37 people found this useful

I purchased 2 of these Drives about two weeks ago- one to handle my lightroom backup (about 1.1 TB) and one for my newly created Aperture library (about the same size.)

I have been moving, copying files on and off all week and the G- Drives are unmounting themselves randomly - sometimes in the middle of large file transfers sometimes after several hours of no activity- at $300 a pop i think i wasted 600 bucks - probably should return them but at this point my backups are complete and my new caviar black 2TB (4 drives) are installed in my mac pro so I may just unplug them and shelve them

ps while they look great they are (IMHO)

JUNK!!!!!

18 of 30 people found this useful

I've had several Lacie, Western Digital and G-Tech drives and a Drobo. Lacies power supplies always died and they are noisy, Western Digital very silent but the firewire has issue when waking up, Drobo's are just slow and loud. I have had both the raid and non-raid versions of g-tech and I definitely like this one the best. Raid version is just too loud. If Western Digital would every fix their FW issues, that would be my pick, but until then G-tech is my vote.

23 of 24 people found this useful

I put in an eSATA board to use with the 2T G-drive. It is as fast as my internal HDs. The look and quality is worth the money. I have had the drive for a year and have had no problems. I plan on getting a separate drive just for the Time Capsule backup. I installed a 2T internal drive 6 months ago for TC back up and it has already failed. I went through a well regarded Mac Authorized dealer for that internal drive.

No issues - though the light can be annoying - you can tape it or place the drive out of sight....and when it is working you know it.

11 of 15 people found this useful

I've purchased now 3 of these hard drives since early 2008. Initially, I was drawn to them from the 4.5/5 given to these drives by Macworld and was put at ease given Hitachi's reputation.
I did have a problem akin to those discussed here with my first drive, but the problem was promptly diagnosed, fixed, and the drive was quickly returned to me. The problem was with the control board in the back and NOT the drive itself. The drive itself is as reliable and speedy as any external drive I've used, and I've definitely put all 3 through their paces, all daisy chained without any appreciable loss in speed.

Some of the other gripes about these drives I've read in my extensive research prior to purchasing are as follows:
1) That the disc activity light is obnoxious - I'll agree, but easily remedied by placing the drives out of site

2) That all drives needed to be on in order to daisy chain - I personally fail to see this as a problem and was unable to find any other reliable drives at this price point that allowed otherwise.

In short, these drives are rugged and they last. The information I have stored on them is vital and they have yet to let me down. There are few brands I would trust as much. I'd give them 4.5/5 stars.

32 of 34 people found this useful

This is my first external hard drive experience. It's been easy and the performance using firewire 800 seems just fine. One thing I have to mention: the small white light on the front of the drive is completely ridiculous. It flickers madly when performing any function. Since I like to work in a fairly dark room it was uber distracting. Help on line says to cover it with tape. Ugh. So, 4 out of 5.

14 of 22 people found this useful