G-Tech G-Drive Slim SSD review: svelte, speedy USB 3.1 drive

Jon L. Jacobi reviews the G-Technology G-Drive Slim SSD. G-DRIVE slim SSD USB-C delivers super fast SSD performance and speedy 10 Gb/s USB-C (USB 3.1 Gen 2) interface connection for lightning fast transfers of your precious videos, photos, music and more

G-Technology G-Drive Slim SSD review: A svelte, speedy USB 3.1 drive aimed at the Mac crowd

Performance The G-Drive Slim SSD’s performance is simply excellent—on par with the average internal SATA SSD when used via the USB 3.1 bus. The Slim SSD clocked right around 510MBps reading and 420MBps writing in both CrystalDiskMark and AS SSD. The G-Drive Slim holds its own against the internal SATA drive using USB 3.1, and it’s still a very good performer with USB 3.0. The Atech uses two SSDs in a striped array and shows the potential of USB 3.1. In our real-world copy tests, the Slim wrote a single large 20GB file in 63 seconds (317MBps) and read it in only 43 seconds (465MBps). 20GB worth of smaller files and folders wrote in 117 seconds (170MBps) and read in 97 seconds (206MBps). That’s a typical drop-off for that test. As you can see in the chart above, you don’t lose a ton of performance when you plug the G-Drive Slim SSD into a USB 3.0 port (G-Technology includes cables for both). There’s a drop of about 90MBps both reading and writing. That does, however, make it about 70MBps slower than the smaller, cheaper Samsung T3 when writing. If you’re still living in a PC/USB 3.0 world, the Samsung drive might make more sense. But if you’re rocking a recent-vintage Apple or a PC with 3.1, the G-Drive is your ticket. (Note that the Atech is a 2.5-inch RAID enclosure that was tested with two SATA SSDs installed in a striped RAID 0 array. It’s included simply to illustrate just how much bandwidth is available on the USB 3.1 bus. In real life, USB 3.0 maxes out at around the 400MBps you see above.) Conclusion Like OCZ and Toshiba, G-Technology is a boutique brand that’s now owned by a large company—Western Digital, or WD. Toshiba has hurt OCZ’s reputation as a high-quality performance vendor, but we’re hoping that WD is smarter and only lowers the prices, not the design standards. [Click here to read the full article from PCWorld]