G-Technology G-DRIVE with Thunderbolt High-Performance Storage Solution 3TB (Thunderbolt, USB 3.0) (0G03124)

I now have 2 of them (3 TB) and they are busy quietly performing without any problems (one purchased about 1 year ago and the other within the past 2 months). They were very easy to set up on my iMac; you just plug them in and are they ever FAST (with my iMac thunderbolt connections). The iMac comes with 2 thunderbolt connections and I wanted to use both of them. I take a lot of pictures and backup is important to me. Someone mentioned they are nosy. I don't know why they said that for the 2 of them I have are as quiet as can be, and yes, they do have a light which goes on when they are in operation. The light is not a problem. I also stack the 2 of them on top of each other to conserve space. They seem to be built very sturdily. I guess that metal housing enables efficient heat dissipation.

I'm counting on the robustness and professional build quality of this device, but there are two things that I did not expect: 1. it is very loud. When the drive is really reading fast, it is very audible. Loudest drive I've ever heard...and it is operating normally. 2. Practical speed of this drive is not quite as good as I expected. Without getting into the details, this is my primary Photos drive for Lightroom. When I open lightroom, it takes a while for the drive to wake if it is not already, then it hammers for a while while it refreshes all of the links to the files in the library. At some point I will be switching to a large SSD to make this all work at a higher speed at a lower noise level.

I use this drive with my 2015 mackbook pro for DJ events. In the past I have used slim/usb powered storage and although I hate having a power cord and sacrificing a hard to come by plug in its SO worth it. If I get a request and search the drive my results are instant. No waiting 2 minutes for loading. I could not be happier! I will by the 4TB version if this drive stands the test of time. Awesome product! Definitely worth the money if fast results are important to you. Also fast transfer speeds

This drive is the loudest hard drive I have had in 20 years. Loud drive, and I think it has a loud fan also. Just for that I would never get another G-Drive.I have always used Firewire since its inception, really not in love with USB for graphics work. So when I got new iMac (thunderbolt) and a thunderbolt-to-firewire connector for my older drives end of Dec, 2015, I decided to get a new drive for my main work and use the old drives for backup. I wasn't sure how reliable the firewire-through-thunderbolt would be. Bought the 3TB then and it's been OK, kind of. A lot of problems with files not wanting to save, odd stuff with fonts not available (I store them on the external) etc. This could have been software or hardware.Since it's so loud, I was not sure if the noise was normal, again I haven't heard that kind of clicking, whirring, staccato since the '90's. This week (june 2016) it started doing that thing of showing files but not letting me select them through apps, which I know is a sign of impending disaster. Then clicking and general racket as I backed up to a new drive. To make sure, tried to write files from an older backup to a considerable amount of free space on the G-drive, it started choking and would not continue. Bummer. Even if I decide to try and get it fixed on the warranty, I really don't know if I want it back--if I could put it in another room, maybe, but that is not an option.I like the speed of thunderbolt but it seems that unless you want a really large drive setup, they are just not available... USB 3 is fast but it still makes me nervous. The drive inside is, I think, Hitachi (HGST), and I know that 3TB drives seem to have a higher incidence of failure. Back to Western Digital, I have had better luck with them than any other.

The drive works just fine, reliable speed, but (and this will teach me to purchase without thoroughly reading the reviews) it is indeed Very Loud, annoyingly so. At first the sound was so rough, I thought something was wrong. It sounds Wrong. Reading online, I discovered this was normal for the drive. Which is astonishing, that anyone would produce a computer product that sounds as if it is always on the verge of dying. But here we are. I have a good drive that always sounds as if it is in pain. It's as if every time I use it to access files, I am hurting it. Very disconcerting. Two stars, for making me contemplate the suffering of machinery.

I just received mine today. The first thing I did was to check what brand of hard drive they were using since so many complaints about this product seem to be from the use of WD drives. Happily, the message must have gotten through because mine came with a HGST (Hitachi) drive. My experience with Hitachi has been far superior to my experience with WD. When I buy bare drives for my RAID arrays, I always use Seagate Red, or the HGST Heavy Duty Service drives (I can't remember their acronym). The drive is busily working as I write this. I have it on the Thunderbolt cable plugged into my Cylinder Mac Pro at the end of a Thunderbolt 2 chain. The whole enclosure is relatively quiet, the light is white, not blue, and everything is running coolly. I would have preferred a TB 2 connection, but for the purposes I'm using the drive, it will work just fine. I deducted one star because it is only TB 1 speed, not TB 2.Of course, after the drive has been on 24/7 (as I do with my whole big system) I might come back and amend this report.

I'm a big fan of G-Drive drives. However, I never saw any notification that this only works on 10.7 OS and above. Works great for me, but my wife's laptop will not read it. Now have to upgrade wife's machine to be compatible. I really wanted to keep her in the dark ages and this didn't help...

Awesome build quality, and i love that it has and off and on switch so it doesnt boot up every time i turn on my mac, and i dont have to be unplugging it from the usb port. I use it for my VSTs and sample library (music production) and till now it works great , very silent , very fast.