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There's nothing to setting up the G-RAID with Thunderbolt. Out of the box, the drive works immediately once plugged to a Thunderbolt-enabled Mac running OS X 10.6.8 or later. You do need to turn it on via the power button on the back. The drive takes just a few seconds to boot up and be ready.
Performance and pricing
What shortcomings the G-RAID with Thunderbolt has above, it more than makes up for in performance.
In tests with other Thunderbolt drive, it's the second fastest, trailing behind just the Pegasus R6. In RAID 0, the drive scored some 254MBps when copying data from the R6. When copying data within itself from one place to another, it registered 121MBps. When I switched it to RAID 0 and repeated the same tests, it again was faster than any other dual-bay Thunderbolt drive, registering 154MBps and 74MBps, when copying from the R6 and within itself, respectively.
The drive was also impressive when it was set to copy data back and forth from our test machine, which is a MacBook Pro of late 2011 model that runs a top-speed solid-state drive. In RAID 0, it scored 193MBps in the write test, slightly slower than the Pegasus R6. In the read test, however, it scored 192MBps, topping the chart. When switched to RAID 1, it scored 147MBps for both write and read, no longer faster than the R6 but still faster than other dual-bay drives.
Overall, the G-RAID with Thunderbolt performed well in my testing. The drive did vibrate noticeably and was a little noisy during heavy loads. This won't be a matter, however, if you put it under the desk or on soft material, such as a piece of cloth.
What I found much bigger of a problem is the pricing. Comparatively, at $700 for 4TB (or $850 for 6TB) the G-RAID costs significantly more its peers. The WD My Book Thunderbolt, for example, costs just $550 for the 4TB and $650 for the 6TB. This is a difference that its top performance might not be able to justify.
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
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Self read and write |
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
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Write |
Service and support
The length of the warranty is the most important thing for storage devices and G-RAID delivers, offering a three-year warranty, compared with a one- or two-year from others. At the company's Web site, you'll find a section dedicated to the drive where you can find all you need in terms of support.
Conclusion
While very fast and good-looking, the G-RAID with Thunderbolt's current high pricing will likely steer users to other contenders. For those who can afford it, however, it'll make a very good storage solution.
