At NAB 2013 G-Technology unveiled their new drives, the G-Dock EV with Thunderbolt, G-Drive ev, G-Drive ev Plus, and the G-Drive Pro with Thunderbolt. G-Tech was established in Hollywood in 2004 with a specific focus on creating external drives and drive arrays for digital content creators, ranging from compact single USB drives up to high-performance multi-bay RAID arrays. G-tech is now a subsidiary of HGST, which is owned by Western Digital.
First among its new products is the Evolution series, which combines a external drive dock with dockable drives which can serve as independent USB 3.0 external drives when separated from the chassis. Specifically introduced today is the G-Dock ev with thunderbolt, which is the thunderbolt-based version of the Evolution series.
There are two separate drive modules available for the G-Dock ev: the G-Drive ev, which is capable of maintaining 136 MB/s, and the G-Drive ev Plus, which can maintain 250 MB/s. Both drives are available in 1 TB sizes, giving a total drive size of up to 2 TB, and 272 MB/s or 500 MB/s of data rate, respectively. (Not pictured is the plastic port cover which goes over the SATA ports when the drive is used independently.) Note that these modules are hard drives, not SSDs, and are only 3.29” wide, so are definitely not using 3.5” drives.
The drives can be used independently as separate drives, or configured for RAID 0 or RAID 1. If they are configured for RAID, the dock will light up to let the user know that it is waiting for the paired drive, and the management software (presently OS X only) will let the user know as well.
The G-Dock ev ships with two G-Drive ev modules, with extra drive modules and G-Drive ev Plus modules sold separately.
Also introduced at NAB is the G-Drive Pro with Thunderbolt, an external drive chassis with two drives, in 2 TB and 4 TB capacities, which can maintain 480 MB/s over Thunderbolt.
The G-Dock ev with Thunderbolt, which includes two G-Drive ev drive modules, will be available in May for $749.95. G-Drive ev modules in 1 TB and 500 GB will also be available in May, priced at $199.95 and $149.95 respectively. The 1TB G-Drive ev Plus modules will be available this summer for $349.95. As for the G-Drive Pro with Thunderbolt, they will be available this summer with the 4 TB G-Drive Pro priced at $849.95 and the 2 TB version at $699.95.
