The SanDisk Professional G-DRIVE PROJECT Thunderbolt 3 External Hard Drives are available in capacities ranging from 6TB to 22TB.
These are not SSDs and instead feature enterprise-grade Ultrastar 7200 rpm hard drives. Don’t expect breathtaking transfer speeds as the maximum read and write speeds are limited to 250MB/s.
Key features
- 6-22TB Storage Capacity
- 2 x Thunderbolt 3 Ports
- Read Speeds up to 250 MB/s
- Write Speeds up to 250 MB/s
- SanDisk PRO-BLADE SSD Mag Slot
- AC Adapter Included
- Aluminum Enclosure
- Thunderbolt 3 Cable Included
- Preformatted APFS for macOS 10.15+
- Windows Compatible with Reformatting
The anodized aluminum housing includes a PRO-BLADE SSD Mag slot that allows you to add high-speed storage without increasing the device’s footprint. By utilizing a PRO-BLADE SSD Mag in the enclosures slot you can achieve a lot higher speeds when the drive is connected to a computer.
As the drives have two Thunderbolt 3 ports you could also daisy chain a few of them up if you wanted to create a larger RAID to increase speeds or to have more redundancy in case of a failure.
You could also copy a PRO-BLADE SSD Mag directly to the G-DRIVE PROJECT Thunderbolt 3 External Hard Drive which is handy.
According to SanDisk, these drives are primarily being targeted at professional content creators. If you are working with footage that wasn’t recorded in high bitrates or high resolutions, then the speeds should be sufficient enough for editing. You could also use drives like this in the field as a third backup in conjunction with SSD drives. They would also make a good option if you are using PRO-BLADE SSD Mags as you could use the PROJECT Thunderbolt 3 External Hard Drive as both a nag reader and a backup device.
The drives weigh 3.64 lb / 1.65 kg and have physical dimensions of 8.27 x 5.24 x 3.01″ / 210.06 x 133.1 x 76.45 mm. They are also not bus-powered and require AC power.
Despite the prices of SSD NVMe drives continuing to fall, HDD drives like this still very much have their place.
Price & Availability
The SanDisk Professional G-DRIVE PROJECT Thunderbolt 3 External Hard Drives are now available to pre-order for the following prices:
- SanDisk Professional 6TB G-DRIVE PROJECT Thunderbolt 3 External Hard Drive $369.99 USD
- SanDisk Professional 8TB G-DRIVE PROJECT Thunderbolt 3 External Hard Drive $429.99 USD
- SanDisk Professional 12TB G-DRIVE PROJECT Thunderbolt 3 External Hard Drive $569.99 USD
- SanDisk Professional 18TB G-DRIVE PROJECT Thunderbolt 3 External Hard Drive $719.99 USD
- SanDisk Professional 22TB G-DRIVE PROJECT Thunderbolt 3 External Hard Drive $849.99 USD
SanDisk probably has a lot of work to do if they want to restore confidence in their brand, especially considering their recent handling of a select number of problematic drives.
