G-Technology G-DRIVE 14TB Thunderbolt 3 Review

TweakTown's Rating: 93%

The Bottom Line

Adding the 14TB capacity to its lineup, the G-DRIVE is the perfect companion solution for creative professionals using a two-tiered storage approach. It's costly, but you get what you pay for here.

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G-Technology operates in a similar market space as LaCie and CalDigit, offering data and storage solutions for creative professionals. The G-DRIVE is the base of the desktop portfolio and includes several models with connectivity options that include USB 3.2 and Thunderbolt 2 and 3.

The model in house is at the top end for capacity, offering 14TB in a single 3.5" desktop form factor. Connectivity options include USB-C with a 5Gbps backbone and Thunderbolt 3 with 20Gbps. On the Thunderbolt side, you can daisy chain up to five additional devices.

The G-DRIVE packs in a 7200RPM enterprise-class HDD (a Helium-based solution from HGST) with marketing performance offering 250 MB/s read and write. The G-DRIVE is plug and play ready for macOS systems, but easily formatted for use with Windows platforms. The MSRP of the 14TB G-Technology G-DRIVE with TB3 comes in at $649.99 with a five-year warranty.

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Box art for the G-DRIVE gives us the Thunderbolt logo and mention of the enterprise-grade drive, capacity listed top right.

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The backside has a layout of the drive enclosure with features listed to the right in several languages.

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Unboxing, we have a large G logo on top of the aluminum enclosure.

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Connectivity option includes a single USB-C that supports legacy connections and two Thunderbolt 3 host and daisy chain. Connectivity continues to add a Kensington lock slot and power input to the left.

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The front of the enclosure offers a mesh cage to let air pass through.

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Included cables are Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C. The power adapter and brick in the middle.

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CDM is a staple in performance testing for us, and running through the G-DRIVE, we quickly hit marketing performance at 272 MB/s read, and 269 MB/s write.

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ATTO is yet another popular benchmark for storage performance that breaks down performance based on file size. With the G-DRIVE, we see incredibly consistent performance from 32K to 64M.

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Testing the G-DRIVE performance over USB 3.0, we do see slightly less at 183 MB/s read and 206 MB/s write.

I've had a few G-Technology products over the years, mostly from their portable drive lineup, and I've always been quite happy with the build quality and performance. The same can be said for the desktop solution reviewed here today. The seamless aluminum design of the enclosure adds to both the aesthetic of the device, functionality, and build quality through an added layer of protection to the drive itself.

Performance via USB-C was a bit off at 183 MB/s read and 206 MB/s write, but this is seeming to be the case for our AMD test platform. However, we were able to test on Thunderbolt 3 as well and came away with much better results; 272 MB/s read and 269 MB/s write. Performance translated over to ATTO as well, with peak numbers from 32K through 64M.

Pricing is a bit rough, but we are talking massive capacity here. The drive itself outside of the enclosure is roughly $400 depending on where you look, giving around $250 for the materials and electronics in the chassis to make up the $649.99 price tag. Comparable solutions would be the d2 series from LaCie that caps at 10TB of capacity or the AV Pro from CalDigit that comes in at $749.99 for its 14TB solution.

Tyler's Test System Specifications

• Motherboard: ASUS Crosshair VIII Formula X570 (buy from Amazon)
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (buy from Amazon)
• RAM: Corsair Vengeance 16GB 2x8GB DDR4 3600 (buy from Amazon)
• Cooler: Corsair Hydro H60 (buy from Amazon)
• Case: Corsair Carbide 275R (buy from Amazon)
• OS Storage: Corsair MP600 1TB (buy from Amazon)
• Power Supply: Corsair RM850x (buy from Amazon)
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 (buy from Amazon)