Kinda speechless. We first started The SSD Review some 15 years ago and swore I would never use another hard drive for storage. I’d betcha there are petabytes of flash storage lying around this office to include enterprise drives, client as well as consumer SSDs, many products that never even made it to mainstream sales and some that have never even been seen because of NDA’s.
I could never come anywhere close to filling the SSDs I have in this office, and in fact, I bet there are probably very few non-business level entities that could. Yet… I am sitting here relishing the fact that I am reviewing the hard drive based 22TB SanDisk Professional G-Drive sitting just a foot away and settled into my main PC system. You have to know that there is a catch though.
That catch is the fact that SanDisk Professional is my go-to for my media needs and I have been using the Blade Transport, Pro-G40 external SSD and any of three Pro-Blade SSD Mags since the day I first reviewed them back in October of 2022. There is still only one reason we might see this SanDisk Professional connected to my system though. It has a Pro-Blade SSD Insert that moves data at 10Gbps on or off my system and the G-Drive Project simply by sliding in the Pro-Blade SSD Mag into the front of the unit.
Let’s step back a bit though… Specifications. The SanDisk Professional G-Drive Project is a ThunderBolt 3 hard drive storage device available in capacities of 6, 7.68, 8, 12, 18, 20 and 22TB. The unit we are testing today is 22TB and is capable of transferring data up to 260MB/s read and write with its internal 3.5″ 7200RPM Ultrastar enterprise-class hard drive. If you insert a SanDisk Professional Pro-Blade SSD Mag, performance will increase to 1GB/s (10Gbps) data transfer from the Mag to the PC, however, writing to the hard drive is still limited to 260MB/s SATA 3 speeds. Although you can’t see it in this shot, there is a white LED bar just above the word SanDisk when the unit is on and LED turned on.
On the back of the unit is a power button, quick press for on and long press for off, 19v DC port and an LED on/off switch. To the right of that are two ThunderBolt 3 USB-C ports capable of daisy-chaining data up to speeds of 3GB/s but there is something even better I like. When this is connected to my PC and I shut the PC off, the G-Drive Project shuts off. Boot the system and this boots right back up.
Included with the SanDisk Professional G-Drive project is a power cable and brick that doesn’t take up half of your office as so many do with their incredible size…which is kind of refreshing. Also included is a USB-C cable to connect to your PC. If you are going to daisy-chain into other devices as I have above, you need to supply your own second cable.
The G-Drives chassis is of one piece metal with a plastic ribbed cover top and bottom which I might suggest is to dissipate heat. The unit might get slightly warm but doesn’t get hot and, unlike an SSD, it is not completely silent. Attempts to open didn’t quite go as planned and there is a quiet humming from the drive which seems to be an internal fan. As well, every five seconds or so there is a click which is been addressed extensively on the internet. Western Digital has stated that the fan turns on and off depending on temperature but most complain that the fan continues with an on an off click every five seconds regardless of the temperature. Ours has that faint click every five seconds.
Checking Amazon USA we are seeing the SanDisk Professional 22TB G-Drive Project priced at $574 while it jumps significantly to over $1100 in Canada. It comes with a 5-year warranty. The build in this device is definitely SanDisk Professional grade and we really like the inclusion of the Pro-Blade Mag port along with USB-C daisy-chain functionality but… if you are simply looking for more storage it might be worth it to shop for a bit. The SanDisk Professional G-Drive Project is without a doubt built for those content creators and media professionals that are looking for exactly the type of eco-system SanDisk Professional has put together. I personally will get much use from this in my media work.
Let’s check out some performance specs on the next page shall we?