SanDisk Professional 8TB G-Drive Project - External HDD, Thunderbolt 3, USB (10Gbps), 7200RPM Ultrastar Hard Drive, Up to 250MB/s Read - SDPHG1H-008T-NBAAD

This drive is a beast. I bought it to consolidate scattered backups and media files from years of work — and it handled everything with room to spare. Speeds are consistent even under heavy loads, and Thunderbolt 3 makes a real difference. It’s quiet, cool, and built like a tank. Perfect for large video files, raw images, and project archives. Not cheap, but if you value reliability and capacity, it’s worth every cent. Great choice for professionals who don’t want to mess around with flaky storage.

So far works flawlessly….its over time that will impress me …

Some background - I have a music studio and a photography studio. I have around 15 hi capacity drives - mostly all older G-Techs. I use these products a lot. I bought this SanDisk July 2024. Its sole purpose is to make 1 weekly secondary time machine backup to my photography Mac Studio - which I do every Sunday. The reality is that it will rarely switch on. It boots up sometimes. The unit is stored in its original packaging after performing a backup - it looks like new - the packaging looks like new. But it is so frustrating to use. Tonight it took 20 minutes to start the hard disk. Original cost was $788. Worst drive I have ever had - probably the most expensive as well. Positive note: once started it performs well.

The drive is excellent, but must be formatted for Windows. The online User Manual for this drive (G-Drive) at westerndigital.com contains detailed instructions to perform this step. The instructions refer to a Command Line prompt available by right-clicking the Start Menu, but I did not see this option for Windows 11. Instead, I use the [windows]+R key to bring up the command prompt. That allowed the necessary commands to be entered and the drive ultimately formatted correctly.

I took a chance and bought this from the used/return pile for $120 cheaper. I think I got a good deal (fingers crossed). I backed up all three 2TB drives I have on my Lenovo P17, so I could replace them with 4 TB drives. That worked flawlessly. HOWEVER, I had assumed that I would also be able to connect this drive to my slightly older Lenovo P50 which has a regular USB-C port. I had assumed it would just be slower. But, no, it did NOT recognize the drive at all, not even under Disk Management. I tried several cords and concluded that this device ONLY works with a "real" Thunderbolt port and "real" Thunderport cable (look for the lightning bolt). I would be happy if someone would tell me I'm wrong, because, for me, having a backup means you should be able to read your data with your old laptop if your new laptop gets lost or stolen. I didn't even notice that this thing has a slot for an additional "pro-blade" drive, which could be useful. Most of my data are high-res photo scans and videos, so it would be nice to have different libraries on different pro-blades, but again, only if I can access them from more than one computer... and if the price for those came way down.

Use graids for all our projects, always a great product.

I'm confused as to why this product even exists. The G-RAID model that looks virtually identical, offers the ability to switch between RAID 0, RAID 1, and JBOD. This product is striping (RAID 0, no redundancy). You can't even ask it to just present the disks as JBOD. For a few dollars more it's worth stepping up to the G-RAID model to get the flexibility.

It’s a solid hard drive but I don’t know why it keeps loosing connection with my Mac Studio. Sometimes it will come back after I turn it off and on. Maybe I’ve got a defective unit…