Hello.
It's Dong Ngo of CNET.com and today, I have another Thunderbolt drive to show you.
Now, this is the 7th or 8th Thunderbolt device I have worked on and just to avoid sounding like a broken record, I would say this right away.
All Thunderbolt drives on the market right now share a few things in common.
First, they're all expensive.
Some are more than others but none of them is affordable.
Second, they're all very fast.
Some are faster but none of them is slow.
And third, they all support only Thunderbolt standards.
No USB, firewire, no other router.
And lastly, none of them comes with the necessary Thunderbolt cable which you have to pay another $50 for.
That said, I'll take a look at a few things that's unique to this drive.
Now, this G-RAID here is a dual-blade drive meaning there's two internal hard drive on the inside that you can set in Raid 0 or Raid 1. The problem is the G-RAID does not allow user to change interdrive by themselves.
Meaning that you might want to use it in Raid 1 because if something happen, you cannot fix it by yourself.
That said, it's not convenient for a Raid 1 configuration but rather Raid 0 which is fast but not very good for important data.
And secondly on the back, a platform with two Thunderbolt ports and the small ventilation fan.
There's also a power button.
Now, the G-RAID is one of very few Thunderbolt device on the market that does not share the power status with the connected Mac.
The good news is you can turn it on or off anytime you want by pressing and holding this button for a few seconds.
Right now, it is running without being connected to any Mac.
The bad news is it would not turn off when you turn the computer off.
All will not turn on by itself when you turn the computer on which is a minor inconvenience.
What's the bigger inconvenience is the pricing.
The G-RAID come in three capacity: 4 terabyte, 6 terabyte and 8 terabyte that cost $700, $850 and $1,000 respetively.
That's about $150 or $200 more expensive than some of it's peers.
To make up for that sort off is it was very fast in my testing being almost the fastest Thunderbolt device on the market.
It's also very good looking and sturdy.
That said, if you had a huge tax return, this might just be a great investment.
Once again, my name is Dong Ngo and this has been the First Look at the G-RAID Thunderbolt storage device.
