The good folks at Amazon dropped off a package the other day for a brand-new G-Technology G|DRIVE ev RaW “rugged” drive. I wanted to try one of these drives because as one who edits in several different locations I’m often shuttling media from one system to the other. I don’t carry around any padded foam case on a daily basis so usually these drives just go into a backpack and they get jostled around quite a bit. This new G-Tech series of drives looks to take the portable drive to another level with soft rubber bumpers and even special casings. I elected for the G|DRIVE ev RaW as I really don’t need the drive to float.

The good folks at Amazon dropped off a package the other day for a brand-new G-Technology G|DRIVE ev RaW “rugged” drive.

 

Unboxing a @GTechStorage G|Drive ev raw. It’s blue. With rubber

A photo posted by @editblog on Mar 18, 2015 at 6:38pm PDT

I wanted to try one of these drives because as one who edits in several different locations I’m often shuttling media from one system to the other. I don’t carry around any padded foam case on a daily basis so usually these drives just go into a backpack and they get jostled around quite a bit. This new G-Tech series of drives looks to take the portable drive to another level with soft rubber bumpers and even special casings. I elected for the G|DRIVE ev RaW as I really don’t need the drive to float.

Rubber on. Rubber off. You can work this drive both ways.

The little light on the front of the G|DRIVE ev RaW is a good reminder when it’s working hard. The nature of the softer rubber means the bumper is going to pickup dust, or dirt, or sand particles, or maybe embers depending on how extreme you go with the thing.

G-Tech really wants you to know these drives like the water. The video below is with the G-DRIVE® ev RaW which includes a larger case to protect the drive.

I’ve long made use of the orange LaCie Rugged drives but sadly my hard drive graveyard is littered with orange cases. I think overall they’ve been a good product but sometimes I think it’s more the name“Rugged” that makes these LaCie drives rugged more than anything else. I’ve had some cheap-o Seagate portable drives that have lasted as long.

The inside of a LaCie Rugged drive gets some shock protection like the outside. I’m not going to open the new G|DRIVE as this point.

It’s good to see G-Tech jump in to this rugged game. The first thing I noticed about this new ev RaW drive is the rubber bumper isn’t permanently married to the drive. The unit ships with the bumper off of the drive enclosure itself. It’s a snap to put on and easy to remove if you need to take it right off. The blue bumper is much softer, a bit thicker, and feels like it will absorb bumps better than the harder orange rubber of the LaCie drive. G-Tech claims a 1.5 meter “shock resistant” drop while LaCie claims 1.2 m from “accidental drops” unless you’re looking at the LaCie Rugged Triple USB 3.0 which is 2m. LaCie makes a lot of these orange rugged drives.

Drive speeds are good. G-Tech claims “transfer rates up to 136MB/s” which isn’t bad for an affordable notebook size drive.

The Blackmagic Disk Speed Test matched the claimed speed in the read cycle of the test.

For comparison sake here’s when I’m getting off the LaCie rugged USB 3 drive. This isn’t a completely empty LaCie drive as it’s about 25% full. Note that LaCie’s website lists 385MB/s as they are noting speed from the SSD version.

Take the G|DRIVE ev RaW out of the rubber bumper and there’s a port to use the drive with G-Tech’s G|DOCK ev. You won’t see faster transfer speeds though as the speed is maxed on the ev RaW drive.

They also provide you some white stickers and a place on the bottom of the drive to stick them and make notes about the drive’s contents. That’ll be handy out in the field if these are going to become permanent drives for an individual job. Or if you’re on a snow covered mountains with gloves on and a Sharpie.

The price of the G|DRIVE ev RaW is good at 500GB – $99.95 and 1TB – $129.95. Here’s an Amazon affiliate link for your convenience. Buy enough of these and I can buy some gum!

How well will this new G-Tech drive hold up in a backpack as it gets tossed in, pulled out and shaken around? That remains to be seen but I’ll take this new drive and put it through the ringer of travel to and from the NAB show. If it breaks down and I’ll let you know. Maybe we’ll look back in on the G-DRIVE ev RaW in the fall and see how it’s making out.