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G-Tech G-Speed Studio R Thunderbolt 2 review: A powerful storage device for professionals

Looking for a super-fast and super-spacious storage device to match your Apple Mac Pro? The G-Tech G-Speed Studio R Thunderbolt 2 is perfect for a professional.

Dong Ngo SF Labs Manager, Editor / Reviews
CNET editor Dong Ngo has been involved with technology since 2000, starting with testing gadgets and writing code for CNET Labs' benchmarks. He now manages CNET San Francisco Labs, reviews 3D printers, networking/storage devices, and also writes about other topics from online security to new gadgets and how technology impacts the life of people around the world.
Dong Ngo
6 min read

With up to 24TB of storage space, the four-bay G-Speed Studio R Thunderbolt 2 is a top-tier storage RAID system, rivaling the Pegasus2 R4 Thunderbolt 2 from Promise. And while both proved in testing to be among the fastest storage devices on the market, the G-Speed has a prettier design, looking like a large Apple Mac Pro, and better power management.

8.5

G-Tech G-Speed Studio R Thunderbolt 2

The Good

The G-Tech G-Speed Studio R Thunderbolt 2 is one of the fastest storage devices on the market and ready to work right out of the box. It has a smart design and great power-management features.

The Bad

It's very expensive, and emits a loud beep when turned on or off, or when going in or out of sleep mode.

The Bottom Line

Professionals who need a powerful storage device for data-intensive tasks will find that the G-Tech G-Speed Studio R Thunderbolt 2 is an excellent investment.

As a RAID system that hosts four internal hard drives on the inside, the G-Speed is rather noisy when working and, like the Pegasus2, it's very expensive. Available in 12TB, 16TB and 24TB capacities, the G-Speed costs some $2,200, $2,700 and $3,600, respectively. In the UK, the G-Speed R can be found for £1,300, £1,600 and £2,140, respectively. (G-Tech has not yet announced pricing for Australia, but the US prices would convert to roughly AU$2,500, AU$3,100 and AU$4,130.)

But if you've already bought the new Mac Pro and now need a storage device that's both super-fast -- enough to easily handle 4K video editing in real time -- and capacious, the G-Speed Studio R Thunderbolt 2 is still an excellent investment.

Casual users looking for other options, including those with less storage space and friendlier price tags, should check out this list of top Thunderbolt storage devices on the market instead.

g-tech-g-speed-studio-r-7849.jpg
The G-Tech G-Speed Studio R Thunderbolt 2 hosts four internal hard drives that can be set up in a few RAID options. James Martin/CNET

Design and setup

The G-Speed Studio has a completely new design compared to previous storage devices from G-Tech, such as the G-RAID with Thunderbolt. It now mimics the all-black tabletop cylinder design of the new Mac Pro, while being significantly larger. The device is quite light, however, thanks to its plastic body, although the top portion is made of metal. This top side also opens up to reveal the interior hard drives. There are four hard-drive slots and each can host a standard SATA 3.5-inch (desktop) internal hard drive.

When you buy the G-Speed, it'll be populated with four enterprise-grade Hitachi hard drives of 3TB, 4TB or 6TB, but you can also use your own drives. It's very easy to replace the hard drives themselves -- in fact, it was a little too easy in my trial. All I needed to do was open the top lid (which pops up when you press on it), and I could easily pull the drives out. While this is convenient, it's also not secure, since there's no option to lock the drive bay or the drives themselves into their slots.

The G-Speed has just one large white status light on the front, shaped like the letter G. This light changes to amber if something's wrong. On the back it has two Thunderbolt 2 ports, allowing you to connect a second Thunderbolt device to the host in a daisy-chain setup. Generally you can connect up to seven Thunderbolt devices together without affecting the data speed. There's no support for USB 3.0, however.

screen-shot-2014-09-30-at-1-05-15-pm.png
The G-Speed Studio R Utility software is very easy to use and include a slew of helpful tools. Screenshot by Dong Ngo/CNET

If you use a Mac, the G-Speed requires no setup. Out of the box, it's preformatted using HFS+ file system and includes a Thunderbolt cable. Just connect the device to the computer, plug it into power and you're done. The G-Speed will mount as one large external storage device to the host computer.

If you want to use the device with Windows, there's only one extra step, which is formatting the G-Speed into NTFS. You can do this with the built-in formatting tool within Windows and it takes just a few seconds for the process to complete.

Advanced RAID, helpful software

By default the four hard drives are merged together in RAID 5 configuration. ( Read more about RAID here.) For a four-bay storage device, RAID 5 is a recommended setup. It balances the storage space and performance while guarding the data against one of the drives failing. The G-Speed supports other RAID setups, though, including RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 10.

The G-Speed is a hardware RAID system, meaning that the device manages the RAID setup by itself, without the help of the host computer. It also means that once a RAID setup is built, it can be used with any operating system without requiring a RAID rebuild.

However, this also means that if you want to change the RAID setup, you'll need to use special software, which, in this case, is the G-Speed Studio R Utility. This software is not preloaded on the device but can be downloaded from G-Tech's website. Once installed, the application offers a slew of very helpful tools to monitor and manage the storage system. You can quickly switch from one RAID setup to another (the process will erase all data), view the status of each of the hard drives in detail and perform many other functions.

The use of this software is only required if you want to change the RAID setup. If you're happy with RAID 5, which you should be, there's no need to install the G-Speed Studio R Utility software.

g-tech-g-speed-studio-r-7837.jpg
The device has two Thunderbolt 2 ports and a button that supposedly turns off the beep sound. James Martin/CNET

Excellent power management

Like the Pegasus2, the G-Speed shares power status with the host computer. In my testing it woke up from sleep mode almost instantaneously (in contrast, the Pegasus2 took up to 20 seconds). This means when you come back from a break, there's no need to wait before resuming your work. I also noted that the G-Speed never appeared to dismount from the host computer. This is a major improvement over the Pegasus2.

The G-Speed has it quirks, however. It emits a beep each time it turns on or off, or goes in or out of sleep mode, and the sound was loud enough to startle me the first few times. There's a button on its back that supposedly turns the sound off, but it didn't work for me.

The G-Speed is also rather noisy. The large ventilation fan emits a constant low hum and the hard drives on the inside make a lot of metallic sounds during boot time or when there's a large amount of data being transferred. It's not noisy enough to be a problem in a big office but it can be distracting if you're working in a quiet room.

Performance

I tested the G-Speed Studio R with a MacBook Pro late-2013 edition. The test machine supports Thunderbolt 2 and is also equipped with a super fast PCIe-based solid-state drive (SSD). The G-Speed was tested only in RAID 5, which is the recommended RAID setup for a device of its type.

In write tests it registered a sustained real-world copy speed of 260MB. While this was very fast -- the second fastest I've seen -- it was significantly slower than the 360MBps of the Pegasus2. In a read test, however, the G-Speed did much better, with 456MBps, almost 100MBps faster than the Pegasus. That's the fastest I've seen for a hard drive-based storage device on the market.

CNET Labs Thunderbolt performance

G-Tech G-Studio R (RAID 5) 259.67 455.96Promise Pegasus2 (RAID 5) 361.92 376.02LaCie 5Big Thunderbolt (RAID 0) 213.51 183.76LaCie 2Big Thunderbolt (RAID 0) 179.22 180.96Promise Pegasus R6 (RAID 5) 210.5 177.53Promise Pegasus R4 (RAID 5) 150.47 171.10WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo (RAID 0) 156 167.47LaCie 2Big Thunderbolt (RAID 1) 126.96 147.2LaCie 5Big Thunderbolt (RAID 1) 121.11 141.63WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo (RAID 1) 107.73 109.15
  • Write
  • Read
Note: Measured in megabytes per second

In tests where the G-Speed was set up to do both writing and reading at the same time, it also did very well, with 155MBps.

CNET Labs Thunderbolt performance

Promise Pegasus R6 (RAID 5) 192.53LaCie 5Big Thunderbolt (RAID 0) 183.76Promise Pegasus2 (RAID 5) 165.92G-Tech G-Studio R (RAID 5) 154.83LaCie Little Big Disk SSD 141.69LaCie Rugged Thunderbolt 120.64LaCie 2Big Thunderbolt (RAID 0) 111.36Promise Pegasus R4 (RAID 5) 100.5WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo (RAID 0) 76.97Elgato Thunderbolt SSD 71.84LaCie 2Big Thunderbolt (RAID 1) 60.1WD VelociRapter 600GB 58.05LaCie 5Big Thunderbolt (RAID 1) 55.945WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo (RAID 1) 39.66
Note: Measured in megabytes per second

Other than the noise mentioned above, the G-Speed worked very well throughout testing and generated almost no vibration at all, which is quite impressive for a device of this size. While the G-Speed supports Thunderbolt 2, it works fine with Thunderbolt, and from my experience it delivers very close, if not the same, performance as it does with Thunderbolt 2.

Conclusion

Because of its high capacity and especially its premium pricing, the G-Speed Studio Thunderbolt 2 is not for everyone. Rather, it's designed for professionals who need an all-purpose storage device that has enough performance to handle intensive workloads, such as 4K video editing, as well as large data backups while still offering redundancy.

As a bulky device, it's also better for those who use a desktop computer, such as the Mac Pro, rather than laptop. And if you can afford the new Mac Pro, the G-Speed will seem quite attainable.

That said, for casual users, the G-Speed is overkill. If you still need speed, you can probably get by just fine with a smaller and much cheaper device such as the WD My Passport Pro.

8.5

G-Tech G-Speed Studio R Thunderbolt 2

Score Breakdown

Setup 9Features 7Performance 10Support 6