G-Technology G-Drive Slim (500GB, USB 3.0)

G-Technology's G-Drive Slim is the latest in a trend of ultrathin USB 3.0-based portable external hard drives on the market, directly competing with Seagate's GoFlex Slim and WD's My Passport Edge.

And the new G-Drive is indeed very slim, almost as thin as the GoFlex, but it's clearly wider and longer than the My Passport Edge. Still, it definitely belongs to the small group of compact portable drives currently on the market. The new drive supports USB 3.0 and showed very good performance in my testing. That, plus its sturdy build and the affordable price of around $90 for 500GB, makes it an excellent buy for mobile users, especially MacBook Air owners.

But you can use the G-Drive Slim with any computer, including Windows machines, as long as you know how to reformat it. If you want a drive to use with Windows right out of the box, I'd recommend the GoFlex Slim or the My Passport Edge.

Design and features
The G-Drive certainly is slim, at 0.39 inch, and it looks thinner than it actually is. The G-Drive's aluminum chassis looks good, and matches the design of the MacBook Air.

On one side, the G-Drive Slim has one Micro-USB 3.0 port. This port works both for data and power. All you need is a standard Micro-USB 3.0 cable (a foot-long cable is included) to make the drive work. Being bus-powered is now a standard feature on USB portable drives. The G-Drive supports USB 3.0 but also works with USB 2.0. I tried it with many ports on many different computers, and all of them were able to power the drive and get it connected to the host computer.

The G-Drive Slim is designed for Mac and is preformatted in the HFS+ file system. Once plugged into a Mac running OS 10.4 or later, the drive works immediately, and it supports Time Machine. In my trials, it worked with Windows computers, too, though as I mentioned, I needed to reformat it into NTFS, which took a few seconds. Otherwise, plugging it in is the only thing you need to do in terms of setting it up.

The new drive doesn't come with any software. This is mostly because you can just use it with Time Machine for backup purposes. Windows users will have to get third-party software for that.

Performance
The G-Drive Slim performed very well as a USB 3.0 portable drive. It's not the fastest I've seen, but it was faster than drives of a similar physical size in many of the tests.

I tested the drive with both USB 3.0 and USB 2.0. When used with USB 3.0, the drive offered 87MBps and 100MBps for writing and reading, respectively. For these two tests, the My Passport Edge registered 83MBps and 98MBps, and the GoFlex Slim averaged 82MBps and 102MBps. Overall, the G-Drive Slim outdid its rivals in most of the tests, by small margins.

When used with USB 2.0, the drive scored 26MBps for writing and 33MBps for reading, slightly below the average. The G-Drive Slim worked very quietly in my testing and produced no vibration and almost no heat at all.

CNET Labs external hard drive USB 3.0 performance (in MBps)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

Read

Write

IoSafe Solo G3

110.98 

109.1 

Seagate Backup Plus

110.1 

90.9 

Lexar JumpDrive Triton

112.19 

90.8 

Silicon Power Armor A80

102.7 

87.8 

LaCie Minimus USB 3.0

104.9 

87.7 

Clickfree C6

103.4 

87.7 

LaCie FastKey

115.5 

87.1 

G-Drive Slim

100.3 

86.7 

Hitachi Touro Mobile Pro

103.5 

86.2 

WD My Passport (Winter 2012)

100.59 

82.7 

WD My Passport Edge

97.68 

82.6 

Seagate GoFlex Slim

101.9 

82.4 

Seagate 1.5TB FreeAgent GoFlex Ultra

89.7 

78.8 

Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Pro

84 

72.1 

HP Portable Hard Drive

83.65 

69.4 

Buffalo MiniStation Cobalt USB 3.0

91.8 

66.9 

LaCie RuggedKey

116.82 

41.7 

CNET Labs USB 2.0 external hard drive performance (in MBps)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

Read

Write

G-Technology G-Connect

31.3 

30.9 

Hitachi LifeStudio Mobile Plus

30.9 

29.8 

Seagate 1.5TB FreeAgent GoFlex Ultra

41.9 

28.8 

LaCie FastKey

36.6 

28.8 

Silicon Power Armor A80

32.8 

28.8 

Lexar JumpDrive Triton

33.13 

28.8 

Seagate Backup Plus

33 

28.74 

LaCie Minimus USB 3.0

36.5 

28.7 

Clickfree C6

33.1 

28.7 

WD My Passport (Winter 2012)

33.01 

27.8 

Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Desk

36.7 

27.8 

Seagate GoFlex Slim

37.3 

27.7 

LaCie Rugged Key

35.22 

26.6 

HP Portable Hard Drive

32.99 

26 

G-Drive Slim

32.74 

25.6 

WD My Passport Edge

32.69 

25.1 

Seagate BlackArmor PS 110

30 

24.6 

Conclusion
Sturdy, compact, fast, and nice-looking, the new G-Drive Slim USB 3.0 portable drive makes a great companion for mobile users, especially those with a MacBook Air.