SanDisk Professional G-Drive SSD 2TB Review – Portable, secure and not quite cheap data grave with USB 3.2 in practice

1 - Einführung, Unboxing, Technik und Daten 2 - Synthetische Benchmarks 3 - Anwendungsbenchmarks und Zusammenfassung

With the SanDisk Professional G-Drive SSD 2TB, Western Digital offers a shock-proof and also dust-proof according to IP67 as well as (at least for a short time) protected against accidental submersion, which fits in pretty much every trouser pocket, even if it is quite narrow. Such a thing is called rugged design, so it is a kind of BMX bike among the portable data carriers. The “Professional” in the name refers to the positioning and orientation of the product and in the end must certainly justify the price, which at currently almost 390 euros is not exactly squeamish.

We’ll see where the added value is hidden here, because on the one hand Western Digital advertises with certain advantages of the case including its insensitivity, and on the other hand you can of course also use such a part properly in daily practice. I’ve since “executed” by transporting my my 4K video recordings (I record the clips directly to the SSD in the video studio and then edit them later one floor down in the office) not just one SSD.

That’s where this particular SSD comes in handy for me to counter-test the durability here as well. This test sample was not quite virgin, but in very good condition. Reason enough to use it to accompany 4K video sessions in the recording studio for now. And besides, I’m a scatterbrain who often drops things because he’s too lazy to walk several times and prefers to carry everything in one pile. But more on that in a moment.

Unboxing and accessories

The approx. 90 gram SSD comes to the customer in a 95 x 50 x 15 mm small and cuddly case, whose coating is predominantly dominated by rubber coating and thus adapts to the rugged design, even if bare metal would certainly have done just as well. The head of the SSD slot, which is fixed with security Torx screws, is then the outwardly visible end piece of the solid aluminum core, which protects the SSD on the one hand and is responsible for cooling on the other. That works pretty well, by the way. because I could not measure more than 38 °C on the surface even after 1 hour of video streaming.

Western Digital states a possible drop height of 3 meters that the SSD should survive, which I like to believe. I even dropped the part down the entire staircase, because I held only the cable in my hand along with many other things (quite carelessly) and the SSD then unfortunately made itself independent while walking (so a USB-C is not a safety line). Let’s put it this way: initial drop height approx. 1.50 m on artificial stone plus 10 steps with the relevant upstrokes. The part just had a little scratch on it, thank you. The only thing I didn’t want to test was the 900 kilo load, the car is too heavy for that.

06 Front Side

07 Bottom Side

09 ISO Bottom Plug

08 ISO Top End

04 ISO Front Plug

02 Accessory

01 Intro

The controller offers 256-bit AES-XTS hardware encryption and the SSD is said to be able to write at up to 1000 MB/s and even read at up to 1050 MB/s. I wasn’t quite able to achieve that with the intensively used SSD, but almost. That’s the good news, because what’s the use of a new car scent that quickly evaporates if it already smells bad a little later?  The whole thing is connected, as I already mentioned indirectly, via USB-C in version 3.2 (Gen 2). The two cables included in the scope of delivery also take this into account, whereby there is a variant with Type-A and a pure Type-C cable at the end.

Unfortunately, we could not get any real information about the SSD installed inside, just as little about the controller installed there. On pure write behavior, however, I would guess TLC with about 30 GB of pSLC cache, but we’ll see that in a moment when writing the streams. Because one thing is also clear: For the 4K recording of my videos, the best is actually just good enough, because I always have to transport all the recording from the video studio one floor below so that I can process it further.

For a better overview I have now the data sheet of each variant for you, before I test the SSD on the following pages:

SanDisk Professional G-DRIVE SSD 2TB, USB-C 3.1 (SDPS11A-002T-GBANB)

	In 1-3 Werktagen bei dir	299,72 €*Stand: 19.09.24 21:19
	lagernd	299,72 €*Stand: 19.09.24 16:00

*Alle Preise inkl. gesetzl. MwSt zzgl. Versandkosten und ggf. Nachnahmegebühren, wenn nicht anders beschriebenmit freundlicher Unterstützung von geizhals.de