SanDisk Professional 24TB G-RAID 2 - Enterprise-Class 2-Bay Desktop Drive, 7200RPM drive inside, Thunderbolt 3, USB-C, HDMI Port, Hardware RAID - SDPH62H-024T-MBAAD

This shouldnt be for sale if the software is no longer available.

This is a well made product. The drives can be a bit noisy. But not so much as to be distracting. And I can't really hear the fan that is on the back. The bay holds two 6TB drives that are striped together as a 12TB drive. The one issue that I had with the drive is not being able to control the "G" logo light on the front of the drive. It was too bright. The solution I found was to use one of the disc that magnetize to smart phones. The one I picked was called SALEX Phone Metal Plates Magnetic Car Mount. It is located at this link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08YXRRVMT?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1. They come in different colors, do the job well, and come with an adhesive back. They also look good on the drive. The discs are about an inch and a half in diameter and cover the light well enough to block it out.

There aren’t too many reviews on this model so decided to test it out despite the negative reviews. Using on a 2021 M1 Pro. You can either use both Thunderbolt ports OR the single USB port. You CAN’T use all three simultaneously. Let’s say you have the MacBook laptop connected to the usb c port, guess what? Those other two thunderbolt ports are useless. And vise verse, if you are connected to the thunderbolt, you can only use that one extra thunderbolt for charging or connecting another drive AND not the additional usb c port. ALSO, what’s the HDMI port for? Is it an input or an output? Who knows I can’t seem to get it to do one or the other. I think it’s just there for cosmetics. Other than that, the drives are fast and work good, but when they are asleep boy are they asleep. They take quite awhile to spin back up and even while I’m not trying to access the actual my drive my computer will show the spinning beach ball until the drive is at full speed. It’s quite. It’s expensive. It’s BRIGHT G light symbol is very annoying I wish I could dim it or at least turn it off. That is all.

As they say in the promotional material, this is setup to run on Mac native. So for Windows you have to first go in and delete the Mac partitions (Right Click on "This PC" and then select "Manage" and then "Disk Management"). Otherwise you'll loose several Gig as there is a volume that is unassigned by default at the end. You can't delete the first volume (about 200 megs) as it's used by the Disk for housekeeping. Create your new "Simple" Volume for the rest and format, and you should be good. I mention all this because the documentation is designed around the idea you are using this Plug-n-Go on the Mac. In fact, I could not find anything that talks about how to switch to RAID-1 or JBOD mode even though it says it can do so. I needed RAID-0 anyway so this does not inconvenience me, but that and the partitioning are also why I couldn't give this a full five stars.

This large capacity drive failed after a relatively short time. The unit began dropping its connection frequently, often with clicks and whines. This is the previous generation model (purchased in March 2022) for a stunning $1800; I expected more and got seriously less. It stings because this drive was used as somewhat of a master drive for client photos and video. The only somewhat redeeming factor is the 5 year warranty, which does me really no good because I would never trust it for data retention. G-Technology was a good brand before it was absorbed by Western Digital.