While familiarity with LaCie's signature, bright-orange-accented Rugged series hard drives comes with the territory of being in the photography business, G-Technology has always relied on the simple reliability of its HGST hard drives and Apple-inspired looks to gain them the same notoriety -- until now. G-Tech's announcements for CES 2015 concentrate on introducing greater shock, dust, drop, and even water protection for those reliable drives inside with an array of bumpers, enclosures, and even lightweight Evolution-series-compatible drives for the mobile creative.
If there's a word to describe the refreshing level of flexibility that G-Tech's new options gives us, it's intriguing. Offering combinations of a couple cases and hard drives, G-Tech offers varying levels of protection as well as a choice between USB 3.0 and SATA, or Thunderbolt, or both options to provide all three interfaces. While it may seem complicated at first, it's pleasantly simple and makes perfect sense.
First up is G-Tech's newest G-Drive ev RaW external hard drive. Based on and compatible with the Evolution Series system that lets you use the hard drive alone on the go or, alternatively, slide it into the G-Dock ev at the studio, the G-Drive ev RaW comes with a rubberized bumper to help protect it from drops up to 1.5 meters high. Additionally, the ev RaW is made of a durable and lightweight compound that let's it survive those drops while also dropping 35% in weight.
Want more protection? Pull that ev RaW out of its blue bumper and slip it or even your current G-Drive ev into the new All-Terrain Case (ATC) for resistance against two-meter drops (on carpeted concrete), dust, pressure, and water (in which the drive floats and is rated for 30 seconds at one-foot depths). The ATC comes with either an integrated ("tethered") USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt cable to save costs of having to purchase a cable and will be sold both separately and together in the G-Drive ev RaW ATC kit.
By choosing the ATC with Thunderbolt, one is afforded the flexibility of switching from the Thunderbolt connection to either the USB 3.0 or SATA port on the back of any G-Drive ev by sliding it out of the ATC and using the proper cable.
Of note, the only Evolution Series drive that may not be compatible with the ATC is the thicker, RAID, dual-drive, portable G-Drive ev 220, though that is still unclear at the moment.
The G-Drive ev RaW will be available in 500GB and 1TB variants at $99 and $129, respectively. Meanwhile, the ATC with USB 3.0 will sell for $79.95 -- a rather steep $50 less than the Thunderbolt variant priced at $129.95. However, adding the ATC to the 1TB ev RaW drive for a total kit price of $179.95 and $229.95 saves a reasonable $30 each route.
Both the 500GB and 1TB G-Drive ev RaW drives will be available this month along with the G-Drive ev RaW ATC with Thunderbolt kit while the other combinations will come February. Check back soon for pre-order links.
Great to see G-Tech move into this space. I've had trouble with multiple LaCie drives in the past that have always made me reluctant to purchase their Rugged drives.
LaCie uses Seagate drives, and neither the LaCie externals or bare Seagates have been very reliable in my experience, and that of many others.
G-Tech, and the HGST drives they use, have been far more reliable for me and many others.
I long ago replaced three LaCie desktop external drives, two of which failed, with G-Tech G-Raids and G-Drives that have been bulletproof, and having once worked with five LaCie Rugged drives and had four of them fail, I look forward to the rugged G-Techs!