Does anyone have any experiences, good or bad, with this drive?
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/G-Technology/0G02831/
I know its RAID 0 and understand the risks but looks like a pretty good price to me for the performance. I would be using it to store my VMs, keep a bootable backup of my Mac Pro, and as a work drive.
Thanks,
Phil
I’ve never used G Drives myself, but one of my customers used some. They lasted about 2-3 years I think, so not bad. They did see a lot of use.
Personally I’m not sure I would use 2.5" drives for the type of usage you plan on doing. I mean it might be fine, but the pain of losing a drive and all my stuff seems too great. The other problem that 2.5" drives tend to have is they can get hot and need to slow down temporarily to cool off. Not sure if the raid setup on that case would alleviate that issue, it might.
You can get a nice reliable 4TB bare hitachi drive for around $130 and a USB 3 case for about $20. If you really wanted you could buy a pair and stripe them.
I actually have a pair of 3TB USB3 Western Digital drives on our Mac Mini that we used for Time Machine backups. They are mirrored and we’ve had them in place for a few years now. They are full to the point that our backups typically have to purge some old files to complete and we’ve had no issues with them.
I owned one of the orignal 1TB G-Drives… and it is still running strong.
When I bought this drive … remember it is ONE TERA BYTE… the drive cost $1000.00
compared to the drive listed above with is TWO Terabyte and 1/4 the cost
not to mention the first drive was USB, and this drive it ThunderBolt
G-Drives are great for home computers/desktops.
I would not run them attached to a server. I have had several client do this and the drive wears out faster than they wanted.
It comes down to IOPs and number of read/write operations it can handle.
My father has one of these on his iMAC at his house with lots of photos on it. It runs like a champ.
Personally I am using Drobo 5D units at my house. They can handle a heavier load and last longer. But come at a higher price point.
For what @Phillip Smith is looking for, these should be good.
This thread caught my eye, but wanted more information on the drive so did a search. Just to add fuel to the fire, I found there is a 4TB version of this available for only $60 more here with other models up to 10TB. That vendor no longer has the 2TB version.
But what seems strange is the difference in the quoted sustained transfer rates between the models. The 2TB is quoted as 480MB/s, while the 4TB is quoted as 165MB. The 6, 8, and 10MB models are quoted as 226, 205, and 245MB respectively. Maybe the 2TB uses RAID 0 while the others use a different RAID configuration?
OK, the difference is the 2TB is the G-Drive PRO while the 4TB to 10TB are G-Drive (not PRO), so although you can get twice the storage for $60 more, it is by no means comparable in transfer speeds. And the vendor themselves now sells the 2TB for $254.95 instead of the original $699.95 so the OP’s quoted Black Friday special of $239.75 is not as much of a discount as it may otherwise appear.
But still may be a good price/performance ratio.
Yeah, I’ve seen it on Amazon for $270 as well, so I knew that the macsales price is not that big of a discount. So, I am not in a real big hurry. It just caught my eye as still being a possible good deal. To get the equivalent speed/size with an SSD drive, the cost would be at least twice as much. if not more.
But, of course, then you have the RAID 0 which can be somewhat of a risk. If you lose one of the drives, you lose the whole thing.
I haven’t decided yet, its not a must have for me but a nice to have. 
Besides, with the 20% off sale for Xojo, the money might be better spent in renewing my license.
But the same could be said of losing a single SSD drive with the same total capacity, although once past a burn in period it seems like they have less which can go wrong. But as you note, a 2TB SSD is not in the same price/performance range.
Price dropped to $188 tonight. That pushed me over the edge so I pulled the trigger on it.
Phil
You picked up a G-Drive or was it a G-Drive Pro? I thought the Pro had 4 drives with RAID 0 to get the higher throughput? The Pro version has 2-3 times the rated sustained speed of the non-Pro model.