Over at PVC (Pro Video Coalition) they posted a nice review of the new G-Technology rugged drives - both the G-Drive ev RAW and ATC. It also includes a nice write up of the G-Dock as part of the workflow. What makes this review stand out is the head to head comparison with teh Lacie rugged drive. It's orange vs blue, toe-to-toe in a battle for the reviewers next purchase.
PVC by Dan Carr
The G-Tech G-Drive ev ATC (who comes up with these names?!) is rated for drops up to 2m and also drops into water “of 1ft for 30 secs”. I suspect these 2m drop figures are quite conservative because the ATC case is built like a tank. To test water resistance, I first gently submerged the ATC in a sink full of water and left it there for some time. No water leaked in during that simple test. I wanted to find the limits though so I took the ATC to a lake and started dropping it from various heights and generally being a bit rougher with it. Some water did leak into the case at this point, so when it comes to resilience to liquid, I’d take G-Tech’s word and not exceed a 1ft drop for 30 seconds of water time. In other words, the ev ATC will save you from an accidental drop into water, but it’s not something that you could deliberately submerge and reasonably expect to have working afterwards. Since the Thunderbolt plug has only a basic rubber cap over it, this doesn’t keep it fully dry during a submersion either, so you’d want to watch out for possible corrosion of the terminals if you did keep getting it wet.
What is puzzling to me is why G-Tech are not offering the aforementioned G-Dock ev without any drives in it. (Videoguys Note: G-Tech now offers the bare G-Dock w/o any drives for $349). This is a pretty big deal for me, in fact it might have been a deal breaker as I sat playing with the ATC drive and mulling over a change in drive systems for my workflow. It’s all very well offering these new ev RaW and ev ATC drives for location photographers and videographers, but if I want to take full advantage of the full Evolution Series environment, I’m forced into purchasing two of the regular metal cased ev drives that come with the dock. I don’t want them! I want the dock for when I’m in the office and I want to buy several ev RaWs and ATCs for use in the field. With the dock + 2 regular EV drives coming in at $650, and single ev drives coming in at $150 each, it means I’m spending an unnecessary extra $300. Some of that annoyance might be negated if they start selling the ATC cases on their own, or the RaW rubber case on its own. Then, at least, I could take the regular metal ev drives into the field with me, albeit in the 35% heavier metal casing. It has been suggested that the ATC case will be available on its own, but no indication yet as to when that might be. Unfortunately it doesn’t appear that the rubber bumper of the ev RaW will be available as a separate purchase and I think that's a mistake to not offer that option to existing owners of ev drives, or people that are forced to purchase them because they come with the ev Dock. read more...
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