Hi guys,

welcome back to the blog and another episode of My workflow with G-Technology.

This time I’m going to talk about the importance of speed vs. capacity, and the different mobile drives I use personally. Since G-Technology offers a wide range of portable storage solutions with different features, I thought it’d make sense to highlight each of them and explain how I use them in different parts of my process. Hopefully, this gives you guys a better understanding of what would fit your very own creative workflow best.

Speed vs. Capacity

We creators live in a complex world, dealing with all kinds of different media types and tools to get the job done. The imaging technology industry proceeds very fast and every year or so, we see big leaps in sensor development and resolution. This means, that files sizes not only get bigger and bigger, we also need to keep up with the processing power of our overall environment, in order to deal with the ever-growing content. So when it comes to investing into new gear, especially the one on which we process and store our content, each decision has to be made very carefully.

There’re a couple of factors to take into consideration, when dealing with mobile storage solutions.

One of them is the environment in which you plan to use these drives. Depending on your type of photography for example, you’ll find yourself in very demanding conditions, dealing with rain, snow or lots of sand. So the reliability of your drives under these conditions should be your highest priority. And while regular hard drives have moving parts built-in, which could fail in very rough conditions or when you drop them, SSDs on the other side come without this weak point.

Another big factor to consider is the type of digital media you have to deal with. You might be a regular photographer, dealing with medium sized files of a 30MP camera, but you might also be dealing with high resolution 4k RAW footage from a Canon C300 while being out in the field for weeks, capturing once-in-a-lifetime moments. For the latter, you obviously would need much more capacity to offload and backup your content in-between the shoots. Additionally, if you need to edit some of your images or footage on location to deliver it to a client asap, you obviously would need to take speed into consideration as well.

You see, it’s a pretty tough topic and not an easy decision to make at all. And while SSDs tend to offer more and more capacity these days, they come at a pretty high price point while not reaching near the sizes available by their traditional siblings.

Ruggedized and blazingly fast: G-DRIVE mobile SSD & mobile Pro SSD

Let’s start right off the bat with some of the fastest and most reliable solutions available on the market. You need a ridiculously fast and insanely tough portable drive, which will never let you down? Look no further and get yourself a G-DRIVE mobile SSD or it’s even faster, slightly bigger brother, the G-DRIVE mobile Pro SSD.

The G-DRIVE mobile SSD features transfer speeds up to 560MB/s and a backwards compatible USB-C port, to keep it ready for a variety of laptop generations. It offers an IP67 rating, which makes it water and dust resistant. The G-DRIVE mobile SSD will also survive drops from a 3 meters height and pressures up to 1000 lb. It’s available up to 2TB in size and its small footprint makes it the perfect choice when travelling in tough environments. Editing native 4K footage from this drive is as easy as plugging it in and getting started.

The G-DRIVE mobile Pro SSD on the other hand brings it to a whole new level in terms of speed. The drive clocks in at a tremendous transfer rate of up to 2800MB/s. It offers the same drop and crush protection like its smaller brother, the mobile SSD and only lacks the IP67 rating. But if pure speed is what you need, this is what you should get. And all this fits in the palm of your hand. The G-DRIVE mobile Pro SSD offers Thunderbolt 3 technology and its transfer rates let you you edit multi-stream 8K footage at full frame rate and transfer as much as a terabyte of content in seven minutes or less wherever you are.

G-Technology G-DRIVE mobile Pro SSD during a speed test

Both of these drives are my first choice when I have to travel light and still don’t want to compromise in performance and durability. They almost don’t add any weight to my overall luggage, yet they’re as fast as it gets with nowadays SSDs available on the market. I mainly use these drives to quickly edit new projects or batch edit a stack of high resolution images, whenever time matters or the type of content demands this type of performance.

Believe me, once you tried one of these bad boys there’s no way back to a regular hard drive for editing content or quickly backing up large files during a trip, especially so in tough environments.

No-Compromise flexibility: G-DRIVE ev RaW & RaW SSD

You guys know how much I love a well-structured and thought-out workflow. From being at a location and shooting these unique moments to being back in the office and finishing projects, before delivering them to a client. Not only do I require reliable and flexible solutions, which can adapt to my ever-changing conditions, but I also need as much performance and capacity as possible at the same time.

I’ve dealt with a bunch of different approaches and solutions from all kinds of manufactures. And while most of them promise a lot, they usually can only convince in either the speed or the capacity department. Also, when mixing up different technologies, you have to deal with incompatibility, different cables and ports and in case of issues with different manufactures and their support as well. Being a professional, this can cost you not only a lot of time but also a lot of money. Especially when dealing with client projects and tough deadlines.

Thankfully, there is a solution to get rid of all these problems: The G-Technology Evolution Series.

G-Technology G-DRIVE ev RaW & ev RaW SSD

The Evolution Series is a highly flexible, reliable and cross-functional set of integrated solutions to support each creative workflow end-to-end. Talking about mobile drives, G-Technology offers the G-DRIVE ev RaW and a faster version, the G-DRIVE ev RaW SSD. I talked about these drives in my prior posts already, but let me highlight a couple things again.

Both drives are built from a super lightweight enclosure, featuring a custom polycarbonate construction. They’re protected by a rubber bumper and can survive drops from 1.5 meters. The regular ev RaW drive features capacities of up to 4TB and rates of up to Up to 136MB/s. The SSD version comes with a 425MB/s transfer rate and offers sizes up to 2TB. Both drives are Evolution Series compatible and can be used as either a stand-alone solution or plugged into a G-SPEED Shuttle with ev Series Bay Adapters to offload and synchronize more complex projects.

I use both of these drives on a regular and the whole Evolution Series system simplified my workflow to where I feel having more time being outside and creating rather than spending hours dealing with backups and bottlenecks of other approaches. While I use the regular G-DRIVE ev RaW drives to store and backup finished projects and bringing them along during my trips, I really enjoy the faster SSDs to quickly backup and edit content while being on location. I don’t need to wait until I’m back home and can start right away with the same performance I’m used to when working with big RAID solutions. Both drives look and feel the same, and the integration with the high-performance G-Technology Shuttle solutions make them the perfect combination between speed and capacity for working professionals of all kinds.

As tough as it gets: The ArmorATD

Last but not least, let’s talk about something brand new: The G-Technology ArmorATD

G-Technology invited me to a special launch event in Munich a couple days ago, where they officially introduced their newest member to the lineup of portable drives, the ArmorATD. And let me tell you right away, this drive not only sits nicely between their already existing products, it’s also looking damn sexy.

The ArmorATD is a rugged, all-terrain portable hard drive that is relentless under pressure of up to 1000lb and is shock, rain, dust and crush resistant to protect your content from out in the field to back in the studio. The USB-C connectivity offers support for Thunderbolt 3, and an USB‑C to USB-A adapter for USB 3.0 compatibility is included as well. The drive offers transfer rates of up to 140MB/s and capacities of up to 4TB, which is plenty of room to backup your valuable data when being out in the wild. The drives come formatted for Windows and Mac right out of the box and are covered by a 3 years warranty from G-Technology directly.

I can’t wait to put this drive to test during the next months. Especially when travelling to some of the more tropical regions, dealing with very high humidity and dusty environments, the ArmorATD will be my preferred option for bringing along my existing projects and also for backing up the content I’ll create during my trips.

You may ask yourself why not using one of the G-DRIVE ev RaW or G-DRIVE mobile SSD drives instead? Well, while the G-DRIVE ev RaW drives are somewhat protected against drops, they definitely don’t offer any protection against outside influences like water, snow, dust and high pressure. The G-DRIVE mobile SSD drives on the other hand offer the same level of protection as the ArmorATD, but are limited in terms of capacity, only going up to 2TB. Also, they come in at a much higher cost. They’re my first choice for editing big sized content and projects, where the speed they offer is required. The ArmorATD though is the perfect choice for backing up and bringing along a variety of already existing content during my trips to harsh environments. So I can always be sure my valuable data is as safe as it gets and all of this is available at a very attractive price point.

Conclusion

There you have it guys, I hope you enjoyed reading along. Picking the right type of storage solution is a complex decision to make. It mainly depends on your personal needs and the types of media you deal with.

In a world where we creators constantly push the boundaries of whats possible, we have to fully rely on our tools to get the job done. Like with gear in general, there isn’t a single solution for your overall content workflow. In fact, it’s about the right combination of tools to perfectly support your creative vision. In my humble opinion, G-Technology offers the perfect lineup of reliable storage solutions to get any of your jobs done. I truly trust their products in any situation and I’m happy that I finally can concentrate on what I do best: Being creative.

So which one is for you?

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

Additional Information

My workflow with G-Technology EP 02: Speed vs. Capacity, which portable drive is right for you?