G-Technology G-Drive mobile USB-C Review (2024)

For the digital hoarder, a good external hard drive can be a true and faithful friend. To that end, the 1TB G-Technology G-Drive mobile USB-C ($119.95) may not have the most storage or be the best value, but it is a speedy and attractive USB-C–friendly drive. Still, despite all the drive's merits, the 4TB Seagate Backup Plus Portable Drive ($135.00 at Amazon) remains our Editors' Choice thanks to its greater capacity, superior price per gigabyte, and two years of free cloud storage.

Design and Features

It's true that if you've seen one drive, you've seen a bunch that look just like it. And in the case of the G-Drive mobile USB-C ($52.50 at Amazon) , that's not necessarily a bad thing. The drive has a thin and beveled aluminum case that comes in four colors similar to those Apple uses for its iPhones: silver, gold, space gray, and rose gold. I tested the silver drive, which has a black plastic trim. The top side also features a reflective "G" logo, and you'll find the USB-C port and disk activity light on the right side.

Measuring 0.51 by 5.08 by 3.23 inches (HWD), the G-Drive is a smidge thicker than the similarly designed 2TB LaCie Porsche Design Mobile Drive ($124.50 at Amazon) (0.4 by 5 by 3.3). It's not quite as slim as the 2TB Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Slim ( at Amazon) (0.37 by 2.99 by 4.46) or as small as the Samsung Portable SSD T3 ($449.00 at Amazon) (0.4 by 2.3 by 2.9), but these differences are negligible. The G-Drive weighs 6.2 ounces, the same as the LaCie Mobile Drive. That's light, but the drive has a comfortable heft to it—a small comfort to anyone paranoid about misplacing a super-light drive like the Seagate Ultra Slim (4.3 ounces) or the Samsung T3 (1.6 ounces).

While the G-Drive would be at home in a purse, backpack, or briefcase, it's not meant to survive an arduous trek through the Sahara or a climb to the top of Mt. Everest. If you're in need of a drive that can withstand the elements, you're better off considering a ruggedized drive like the LaCie Rugged RAID ($349.00 at Walmart) or the Buffalo MiniStation Extreme NFC ($96.99 at Amazon) . But even if you intend to keep the G-Drive on your desk, you should be mindful as it has no rubber feet for grip.

Out of the box, the G-Drive is formatted for HFS+, which means you can just plug it into any Apple computer running Mac OS X 10.9 or later. PC users aren't out of luck though, as the drive can be easily reformatted for NTFS and is compatible with Windows 7, 8, and 10 ($139.00 at Microsoft Store) . It also comes with two cables: one USB-C and another USB-C–to–USB 3.0. The drive is covered by a three-year warranty, and that's about the extent of its available features. Disappointingly, it doesn't come with 256-bit AES encryption, cloud storage, or extra near-field communication security—a shame considering its relatively high price point.

Performance

Inside the G-Drive is a hard drive that spins at 7,200rpm—that's faster than the usual 5,400rpm drive, but it's not going to outdo a solid-state drive (SSD). On the Blackmagic disk speed test and operating over a USB 3.0 connection, the G-Drive logged a respectable 123.2MBps when writing and 131.7MBps when reading. Those speeds stayed relatively unchanged over USB-C, where it logged 121.1MBps writing and 133.6MBps reading. That might seem somewhat counterintuitive, considering the different interfaces, but that has more to do with the drive itself; you would see a more noticeable difference with an SSD.

In our file transfer test on a Mac, the G-Drive copied a 1.22GB file in 14 seconds over USB 3.0 and 11 seconds on USB-C. That means it's more than capable of handling your average backup or transfer. When reformatted for NTFS, the drive completed the file transfer test in Windows in less than a second over USB-C—a result that's on par with the LaCie Porsche Design Mobile Drive.

On our PCMark 7 storage test, which gauges how well a drive performs on general tasks, the G-Drive scored a decent 1,491 points over USB-C. That's not quite as good as the 2TB Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Slim (2,028), the 4TB Seagate Backup Plus Portable Drive (1,985), or the 2TB LaCie Porsche Design Mobile Drive (1,895), but it is on par with the 1TB Western Digital My Passport 2016 (1,457).

When it comes to cost, the G-Drive is about 12 cents per gigabyte, which is expensive considering its lack of extra features. For the same capacity, the 2016 Western Digital MyPassport costs 7.9 cents per gigabyte and comes with 256-bit AES encryption. Meanwhile, the Seagate Ultra Slim is an excellent 4.9 cents per gigabyte and comes with an extra terabyte of storage and two years of free cloud storage. The Buffalo MiniStation NFC costs 13 cents per gigabyte, but that's a ruggedized drive with extra NFC security. The real kicker, however, is that the G-Drive is limited to 1TB. Generally, you'll find greater value with larger-capacity drives. For instance, the 4TB version of the 2016 My Passport ($149.00 at Amazon) costs 3.9 cents per gigabyte compared with the 7.9 cents per gigabyte of its 1TB cousin—but there's no real chance of that with the G-Drive.

Conclusion

Speedy, attractive, and future-proofed thanks to USB-C compatibility—you could do far worse than the G-Technology G-Drive mobile USB-C, especially if you're looking for a drive that matches your iPhone or MacBook. But considering its limited feature set and capacity, this won't give you the best bang for your buck.