G-Technology: Any opinions as to quality?

Elmer_Lang

Elmer_Lang

Well-known member
Just bought a G-Mini. Was wondering if anyone's heard about or had experience with G-Technology drives?

I have a bunch of lacie drives, never had a problem but have heard many horror stories so I thot I'd give these a shot.

Thanks!
 
G-tech is Hitachi. Drives inside are always basic Hitachi ones. Cases are nice and chipsets good and reliable. Those small drives though, the G-drive Q and the mini, have insufficient heat sinking and no fans. Heat is the no 1 killer of hard drives, so I suggest if you'll be driving it hard with video, get a fan on it at least. I had a G-drive fall over from heat.

I have a G-Safe too. Very good indeed for storing footage. Raid-1, as all video storage should be, for security. It also has a fan, and is an noisy as a chug chug electric heater.
 
Hey Lucas, great info, thanks!!!

Jus' curiously, all my lacie drives run hot but never had a problem, got any idea/opinion what's up with them. I've certainly heard the horror stories, maybe I just been lucky. (Sorry, not meaning to be pushy, just wanting to take advantage of a guy who seems to know what he's talking about.)

Ha! Just saw your comment about the G-Safe.
 
There have been some threads about noisy and failed G-Tech drives and I have had both. Search is you friend for these threads.

Check out OWC (Other World Computing). Their house brand Mercury housings are top notch, then add whatever drive makes you happy. Lately, I've been using Western Digital 1TB 7200RPM with success thus far.

Grant
 
I have ten G-tech drives. Everything from 320 gig esata to 4 terabyte esata drives- and everything in between. Never had a problem. Never lost a single piece of video. Always perform when needed. I agree make sure you get drives with built in fans- because video editing is very demanding and results in high unit temperatures.
Jim
 
We use the G Raid ES & a whole bunch of their 2TB raid's. I also have a G-Raid mini that works well as long as it's plugged in - bus powered it is only suitable for transfers. All of the other drives work really well.
 
Any external hard drive can fail. Failures are due to either the hard drive itself, or to the enclosure. As far as hard drives, everyone has their story, and it's all anecdotal; what happens is that each of the major HDD manufacturers occasionally release batches that are just bad, and they get a bad rep as a result, with those users who were unfortunate enough to buy one from the bad batch. I've had Seagates fail on me repeatedly - out of 10, I've had 4 fail (all sizes and speeds). I've had a Western Digital enclosure fail (a 4TB RAID 1), where the drives were OK, but the RAID controller went bad. Now I'm on Hitachi HDDs and Samsung HDDs all in their own Hitachi and Samsung enclosures and so far so good, though if you ask people, they'll remember that Hitachi bought the IBM HDD operation... the famous failing Deskstars dubbed Deathstars. Samsung seems to have a generally good reputation. But honestly? It's a crapshoot. I'd buy a good enclosure and put in some Samsung HDDs, but perhaps I'm atypical, in that I like to roll my own when it comes to picking disks and enclosures, rather than buying off the shelf stuff like G-tech, LaCie or what have you.
 
OldCorpse said:
Any external hard drive can fail. Failures are due to either the hard drive itself, or to the enclosure. As far as hard drives, everyone has their story, and it's all anecdotal; what happens is that each of the major HDD manufacturers occasionally release batches that are just bad, and they get a bad rep as a result, with those users who were unfortunate enough to buy one from the bad batch. I've had Seagates fail on me repeatedly - out of 10, I've had 4 fail (all sizes and speeds). I've had a Western Digital enclosure fail (a 4TB RAID 1), where the drives were OK, but the RAID controller went bad. Now I'm on Hitachi HDDs and Samsung HDDs all in their own Hitachi and Samsung enclosures and so far so good, though if you ask people, they'll remember that Hitachi bought the IBM HDD operation... the famous failing Deskstars dubbed Deathstars. Samsung seems to have a generally good reputation. But honestly? It's a crapshoot. I'd buy a good enclosure and put in some Samsung HDDs, but perhaps I'm atypical, in that I like to roll my own when it comes to picking disks and enclosures, rather than buying off the shelf stuff like G-tech, LaCie or what have you.
Click to expand...

I agree with this. It really is a crapshoot, and sooner or later, whatever brand you choose, the drives in particular will fail. Choose a recommended controller from a good well respected company like G-raid, and it should be safe though - it's the drives that are really unreliable. Two words: RAID ONE
 
Jim Carswell said:
I have ten G-tech drives. Everything from 320 gig esata to 4 terabyte esata drives- and everything in between. Never had a problem. Never lost a single piece of video. Always perform when needed. I agree make sure you get drives with built in fans- because video editing is very demanding and results in high unit temperatures.
Jim
Click to expand...

+1 on this. I have 4 G-Raid esata drives...never had a problem.
 
Lucas Adamson said:
Two words: RAID ONE
Click to expand...

but if one drive in the array fails, can't it be problematic to retrieve the data from the surviving drive sometimes? try to mount the drive and it's unhappy that it isn't a raid anymore. i don't really understand the advantage of raid one over independent duplicates.
 
IMHO I'd avoid G-Tech Mini's at all costs, I've used 2,
1st one (320GB FW400/800) failed so sent back for repair, then failed again outside of warranty, tried plugging the raw drive into an HDD docking station but there's no life in it,
2nd one (500GB FW800) failed so returned for repair, don't know how this one's doing now as it was owned by production company I no longer work with

Seems like these things aren't built to last, which wouldn't matter if they weren't marketed as the solution to portable drive failures
 
I have several G-drives from "mini" to larger ones, no problems at all, but I tend to buy from OWC these days, their selection and quality have been great for us. As mentioned above, any drive is subject to failure.
 
MPB said:
but if one drive in the array fails, can't it be problematic to retrieve the data from the surviving drive sometimes? try to mount the drive and it's unhappy that it isn't a raid anymore. i don't really understand the advantage of raid one over independent duplicates.
Click to expand...

That may be the case with software or motherboard applied RAID arrays, but with the 1TB or 2TB e-Sata/ FW800/ USB2 G-Safe, you simply slide in a replacement for the failed drive, and it gets to work backing it up. It really is an ideal system. I can't recommend highly enough, unlike their heat-sink only single drives, which don't cool sufficiently for video in my (painful) experience.
 
G-RAID Mini 1 TB seems well-built, but...

G-RAID Mini 1 TB seems well-built, but...

I have a G-RAID Mini 1 TB w/eSATA, 2 x FW800, and 1 USB , with external power. Mine has both a fan and a finned, aluminum heat sink on the bottom. Have used it in a pretty harsh environment (VERY dusty indoor horse arena), connected to a laptop w/4 GB memory running Vista 64, and it's worked.

What's a BIG problem for me is the accompanying software. When installing, I never got the opportunity to choose between RAID levels. To this day (after owning it for about 4 months), I still don't know how to change...or even check...the RAID level. I wanted RAID 1, but am not sure what it's operating at. (I know that's foolish/dangerous, but I've been using it only as a short-term, interim storage & transfer device, i.e. as soon as footage is on the Mini, it gets converted to another format and written to an HDD in the laptop).

Also, upon installation, the drive was assigned as my "G" drive, then, somewhere along the way, it somehow got changed to my "I" drive without any intervention from me.

My biggest worry: if/when the unit gets attached via eSATA BEFORE booting, Vista 64 produces a BSD, and mysteriously re-boots, seemingly whenever it feels like it. I posted a brief buyer's review at the vendor's web site and someone from G-RAID actually replied asking if I got my problems ironed out. I replied with questions, but never heard back from them. (So, based on my experience with customer support, and particularly with the software, I haven't been impressed).

The only way I've been able to work apparently trouble free is to let the laptop boot-up completely, THEN power-up the Mini, THEN attach it to the laptop via eSATA. I haven't tried FW800 or USB.

Bottom line: I'd say the the product is/seems to be sturdily built, but beware of the software and the poor installation instructions.
 
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