Hi guys,

welcome back to the blog and another episode about a brand new and pretty exciting member to the range of gear I use on a daily basis.

I just recently came back from a month-long trip through the United States, shooting travel and architectural content for some of my clients in the hotel industry. With me I had G-Technology’s brand new ArmorATD, a rugged, all-terrain portable hard drive. So what could be better than a demanding trip through a variety of conditions, to test out this new bad boy?

Let’s get into it and see what my final thoughts on this drive are after arriving back to the office here in Berlin.

Not your average type of mobile drive

The first thing I noticed right away, is the very clean and appealing design of the G-Technology ArmorATD. As an architectural photographer, I focus on the absolute highest quality of output and the gear I use has to inspire me on a daily basis. The futuristic look of this drive caught my attention right away.

The ArmorATD features a very clean and futuristic design

Take for example the camera I use: I wouldn’t be excited taking images with a camera, whose look or feel I don’t like at all. It just wouldn’t inspire me to get out and shoot with it. It would rather get into my way and block my creativity. And it’s the same with all the other things I use throughout my creative process, whether it might be the lenses and how they render or the screen I edit my pictures on. The latter allows me to explore the whole potential that my images have to offer, even before I start editing or printing them.

I guess you get what I’m trying to say, right?

The pure look and feel of the gear and how we can identify ourselves with it definitely has a direct impact on our creative process.

The above said is true for hard drives as well:

Usually, managing or backing up content while on the go never felt inspiring to me. It’s a cumbersome and annoying step within my creative process. I purely have to deal with it in order to secure my files at some point.

However, pulling the ArmorATD out of my bag feels as exciting as picking up my camera. I absolutely love the futuristic color and shape of the drive itself and the overall build quality and haptic is better than on any comparable drive I’ve ever used before. In fact, it integrates seamlessly into the setup of other gear I use and I truly appreciate the high-quality finish of the ArmorATD.

It’s awesome to see, that G-Technology put in the time and effort to come up with something that sexy, while maintaining an overall simplicity.

How rugged is the ArmorATD really?

Alright, enough raving about how much I love the look of the ArmorATD. What’s worth the best looking hard drive if it can’t keep up with the hype? Right, nothing at all…

Well, I’m happy to say that G-Technology did everything right when it comes to the specs and internals of this drive.

The ArmorATD’s internals are based on a 5,400 rpm platter-based drive toughened to IP54 standards. That means it is dust and splash resistant, but can’t be immersed into any liquids of course. Platter-based drives use moving parts to some degree, which in fact makes them more vulnerable as SSD drives (these lack moving parts completely).

That being said, G-Technology did a professional job on protecting your valuable data from outside influences as good as possible:

The drive features a triple-layer shock resistance, which not only keeps your content safe from rain and dust of any kind. It also makes it pretty crush resistant and the ArmorATD is rated for up to 1000lbs (around 453kg) of direct pressure.

The triple-layer construction braves the elements

The three layers, consisting of internal shock mounts, the aluminium enclosure itself as well as the protective rubber around the drive shield your data from accidental drops of up to 1.2 meters as well.

All these features should give you more than enough confidence that your data is as safe as possible at all times, no matter if you’re shooting in the city or out in the wild, where demanding conditions can give you a tough time.

Who’s the ArmorATD made for?

After reading all of this, you might ask yourself exactly this question. In fact, this is not easy to answer and depends on several factors and habits of your own.

We all live in a world where the amounts of data and file sizes in general get bigger and bigger. Especially as professional creatives we have to deal with high-resolution content, like 4K video files or 40+ Megapixel images and trends of the last years show that this will only get crazier in the future. This means that we’re not only in the need of large amounts of disk space but also require the performance from these drives in order to keep our deadlines with post-processing.

Of course, being a traditional platter-based drive, the ArmorATD can’t keep up with today’s SSD based hard drives in terms of total speed and in fact, that was not the intention of G-Technology at all. So if you’re in demand for the absolute highest performance, this drive might not be the right one for you. That being said, its read/write performance with 140 mb/s is still ahead of what comparable drives of the competition are able to deliver.

Instead, the ArmorATD truly shines in some other areas, so let me summarise these real quick to wrap things up:

First, its price-point in terms of cost per Gigabyte is a lot better compared to SSD drives. This makes it a much more attractive solution for anybody who’s not in the absolute need of high-speed performance. And this is probably true for the most of us creatives, especially the ones dealing with photography only or whose main focus is not high-res video.

The much cheaper price as well as the super-tough construction make the ArmorATD also the perfect backup drive. Not only for storing your backups in the office or at some other safe place but especially while traveling or being on location working on a client project. The ArmorATD was build with the idea in mind to secure your valuable data under demanding conditions. Some of which most SSDs would not be able to resist. And I can’t stress enough how important it is to always have at least a second copy of your files at all times. With the ArmorATD you’ll be safe, no matter the environment.

My personal setup consists of a couple ArmorATD drives, which I primarily use for exactly this purpose: Backups and bringing along some older projects I might need access to while travelling. Next to the ArmorATD drives, I usually have a small SSD with me, like for example the G-Technology G-DRIVE mobile SSD. I use the SSD to make a very first pre-selection of my keepers as well as to batch-edit larger projects on the go. Whenever I’m done, I move the project from the SSD to one of my ArmorATD drives. Not only is this the most cost-effective way of dealing with data, it also ensures I have a second backup right away.

Alright folks, that’s it for this episode. I truly appreciate your steady support and hope this post could help you in one way or the other.

In case you have additional questions, feel free to reach out to me at any time.

Thanks for reading and following along!

Talk soon,

Chris

@chrismartinscholl