I'm thrilled to report my huge SanDisk G-Drive hasn't deleted my data even once

I'm sick of having to save all my stuff to the cloud all the time. Why can't I just have the storage I need right here, on my desk, without a data centre in a fjord in Norway somewhere having to gulp three large swimming pools of water just to save the latest 326 pictures I've impulsively taken of my cat, I've found myself howling at the bathroom mirror late at night in fits of existential agony.

Enter the SanDisk G-Drive.

SanDisk has historically had many of the most trusted portable storage solutions around, including several spots on our list of the best external hard drives throughout the years.

However, since 2023 the company has faced some serious headwinds in the wake of reports of their drives spontaneously deleting people's data, leading to many many terabytes of files, videos and cat pictures lost forever to the sands of time. Which is sort of the exact opposite of what you get your own external hard drive for.

However, I've had one of their SSDs, the small and handy Extreme Pro SSD, since 2022, and have yet to lose anything off that, so when I had the opportunity to welcome the 24TB G-Drive (formerly known as the SanDisk Professional G-Drive) to my desk for testing, I was more than happy to risk it.

Design & build

Look, it's an external hard drive. There's only so much excitement a design department can conjure here.

To counter the dull grey and black on show, SanDisk, to its credit, has opted for a rather eye-catching Blade Runner-esque design here. Ridges run along the top and bottom, as well as forming a faux-grille on the front, breaking up the monolithic server-rack aesthetic.

As this is a more traditional spinning hard-disk drive rather than a solid-state one (better for capacity) the size of the G-Drive is, let's say... considerable. At 210 x 133 x 41mm, it's noticeably bigger than my Geekom mini-PC and even bigger than a Mac mini, only outdone by the Mac Studio on the height front.

It also weighs more than my personal laptop, at a substantial 1.32kg (2.91lb), so unless I foresee having to port a lot of data on my travels, my pocket-friendly Extreme Pro will be more popular with my rucksack. That said, with only a power cable and USB connector to your computer needed, you can travel with it if you need. And as it's very ruggedly built, you can use it as makeshift exercise equipment (just mind your toes).

Features and performance

The SanDisk G-Drive has a singular purpose in its life: store data, and lots of it. Now, as an HDD, the focus here is on volume over transfer speeds, so the USB connection on the back is a USB 3.2 Type-C proposition only, no Thunderbolt or anything like that.

That said, I tested the maker's claims of 280Mb/s read and write speeds, and achieved figures close to that, with average peak read speeds of around 271Mb/s and write speeds of 258Mb/s (those can be affected by your computer OS, bear in mind), and as this drive isn't meant for newsroom use or lightning transfers, that's plenty.

The storage of 24TB is more than enough for any personal user, and indeed will more than do for many freelance pro photographers and video editors. Most importantly, I should be able to save up to 24,000 1-minute videos of my cat in glorious 4K on this bad boy.

Now, in 2023, SanDisk and Western Digital got in some trouble due to reports of their drives spontaneously deleting data and going rogue in overwriting existing files, which caused the company an ongoing PR headache. Well, I'm happy to report that after over 4 months with the G-Drive, it's still to accidentally delete anything from me (I mean, I have, but that's just me not paying attention to which folders I'm selecting).

Price

Are you sitting comfortably? The SanDisk G-Drive starts at $449.99 for the 6TB variant, and goes all the way up to a dizzying $1,199.99 for the 26TB unit. That is not an insignificant amount of money, which marks this out, perhaps rightly, as a product for editorial, photography and video professionals. But as such a product, it's a solid investment, especially with cloud storage providers like Google starting to charge more and more for their services.

Buy it if:

• You are a pro photographer or video editor
• You need loads of storage
• You don't need to take it everywhere

Don't buy it if:

• You need transfer speeds over storage capacity
• A cheaper, less pro-focused solution will do the trick for you