G-Technology GDrive Mini 320GB review

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Verdict:

Needs USB 2, FireWire 400 or FireWire 800

Review Date: 30 Jan 2009

Price when reviewed: (?230 ex VAT)

Reviewed By: Kenny Hemphill

Our Rating 4 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

G-Technology's range of hard drives always focus on performance and reliability, and for that reason, its drives are often more expensive than its competitors. But that emphasis on reliability is particularly important for portable hard drives.

This 320GB model is encased in an aluminium housing and has a large heatsink on its underside. This design means that the heatsink sits a couple of millimetres above the desk on which the drive is situated. The aluminium enclosure provides more protection against bumps and knocks than the plastic case often used for this type of hard drive, and the heatsink helps keep the drive cool. Overheating is a significant contributor to drive failure, so the inclusion of the heatsink should make the drive more reliable.

The drive itself is a 7200rpm model, with 8MB cache, and the enclosure has ports for FireWire 800, FireWire 400 and USB 2. There's also a power switch and a socket into which you can plug a DC adaptor, although the drive can be powered from a USB or FireWire bus. The GDrive Mini ships with cables for all three interfaces, as well as a leather carry case.

In our tests, the GDrive Mini performed admirably, writing 256K blocks sequentially at 73MB/sec and randomly at 32MB/sec. Read speeds were also good: 75MB/sec for sequential 256K blocks and 23 MB/sec for random 256K blocks.

Your choice of portable drive will come down to budget and what you want to use it for. If you have tight budget and don't intend to carry the drive around a great deal, then the GDrive might be overkill. But if you plan to use it for mission critical data and have it as a permanent resident in your laptop bag, then spending an extra few pounds for greater peace of mind seems to us like money well spent.

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