Review: G-Raid Studio with Thunderbolt 2

This particular unit, a G-Raid Studio from G-Technology, offers two 4 TB 7200rpm hard disk drives mounted vertically with dual Thunderbolt 2 ports and an external power supply. It ships with the two drives in RAID 0, so you get 8TB with all the performance and no redundancy.

The performance is superior to the earlier G Dock EV, although this may be, in part, due to the use of 4TB instead of 1TB drives. The vertical mounting of the drives reduces the footprint on your desk and the Thunderbolt cable is a good length. The second Thunderbolt 2 port allows you to connect an additional Thunderbolt accessory, such as a display or network adapter, directly to the G-RAID. I used this for my network connection and there were no noticeable delay in the Mac as it sensed the new device.

By downloading the G-RAID Studio Configurator from their website, you can reconfigure the drives to RAID 0 or RAID 1 or as two individual drives. The tools worked simply and quickly under Maverick to change the configuration - even warning you that all data would be lost when you format.

With 2 x 7200rpm SATA drives, the unit?s data rates are completely compatible with the Thunderbolt 2 connection. I tested the unit with a MacBook Pro laptop with Thunderbolt 1. read more...