G-Tech rolls with Thunderbolt for drive speeds like lightning

If you can afford one of those brand new shiny Mac Pro computers built for video editing and lots of photography, there’s a strong possibility you need a hard drive to go with it, and G-Technology is this week expanding its external drives for that reason, supplying new gear for people who need high performance hardware.

Geared at people who want both Thunderbolt and USB 3.0, two G-Drives are on their way to shelves which can make that happen from the one body, rather than relying on a shell with only one and not the other.

First there’s the G-Drive with Thunderbolt, that packs in a 7200RPM hard drive in an aluminium enclosure with speeds of 165MB per second, and pairing it with both a Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 ports on the back, with cables for each bundled in the box.

Storage options for the G-Drive with Thunderbolt will come in at 3TB and 4TB, with prices set to $299.95 and $399.95 respectively.

Next up is the portable version, the G-Drive Mobile with Thunderbolt, which is more or less exactly what the name says: a portable notebook drive that doesn’t need an AC adaptor and can connect to either Thunderbolt or USB 3.0 easily. Speeds aren’t exactly as fast as the desktop model, but still high, with 136MB per second available here.

This only comes in one size, likely because 7200RPM notebook drives still haven’t pushed beyond the one terabyte mark, so that’s the option available here, arriving in the 1TB drive for $219.95.

Both drives are geared at people who need high hard drive speeds in their work, such as video production people, photographers, animators, and anyone who knows what the terms “2K” and “4K” are in filmmaking.

Interestingly, neither of the drives are built for Thunderbolt 2, and while both are compatible with the ports being used, the speeds on offer will only be Thunderbolt’s first generation speeds, not second-generation from Thunderbolt 2.

G-Technology also announced a “Pro” model of its G-Drive alongside these two which will start at $699.95 for 2TB (or $849.95 for 4TB) which will bring higher speeds for people who need performance that outperforms the regular drives.

Like the other G-Drive drives, this one sports a 7200RPM drive, but pushes the speeds to three times that of the regular Thunderbolt G-Drive, with a transfer rate of 480MB per second, translated to a gigabyte every few seconds.

Pretty snazzy.