SanDisk Professional (previously G-Technology) is a brand of SanDisk and

Western Digital Western Digital Corporation is an American data storage company headquartered in San Jose, California. Established in 1970, the company is one of the world's largest manufacturers of hard disk drives (HDDs). History 1970s Western Digital ...

that produces external storage products designed and marketed for the

Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

, creative pro,

photography Photography is the visual arts, art, application, and practice of creating images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is empl ...

and A/V markets. Its

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard, developed by USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), for digital data transmission and power delivery between many types of electronics. It specifies the architecture, in particular the physical ...

FireWire IEEE 1394 is an interface standard for a serial bus for high-speed communications and isochronous real-time data transfer. It was developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Apple in cooperation with a number of companies, primarily Sony a ...

eSATA SATA (Serial AT Attachment) is a computer bus interface that connects host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives, optical drives, and solid-state drives. Serial ATA succeeded the earlier Parallel ATA (PATA) standard ...

, SAS,

SCSI Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices, best known for its use with storage devices such as hard disk drives. SCSI was introduced ...

Thunderbolt, and

Fibre Channel Fibre Channel (FC) is a high-speed data transfer protocol providing in-order, lossless delivery of raw block data. Fibre Channel is primarily used to connect computer data storage to Server (computing), servers in storage area networks (SAN) in ...

systems support all levels of audio/video production.

History

In 2004, Medea Corporation, a manufacturer of

storage systems Storage may refer to: Goods Containers * Dry cask storage, for storing high-level radioactive waste * Food storage * Intermodal container, cargo shipping * Storage tank Facilities * Mail storage, storage by mail or delivery service * Self storag ...

optimized for

digital content creation Content creation or content creative is the act of producing and sharing information or media content for specific audiences, particularly in digital contexts. According to '' Dictionary.com'', content refers to "something that is to be expresse ...

, was sold to

Avid Technology Avid Technology, Inc. is a global technology company headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, and was founded in August 1987 by Bill Warner. It develops software, SaaS, and hardware products used in media and entertainment. History Avid wa ...

.Melody Hanatani, February 12, 2008. �
Tech ‘baby’ grows up with merger
” Santa Monica Daily Press. Retrieved on December 17, 2008. Medea co-founder Roger Mabon purchased the rights to one of Medea’s products from Avid – a two-drive

RAID RAID (; redundant array of inexpensive disks or redundant array of independent disks) is a data storage virtualization technology that combines multiple physical Computer data storage, data storage components into one or more logical units for th ...

0 storage system for creative professionals – and opened up his own

startup company A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an Entrepreneurship, entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses tha ...

just blocks from his house in

Santa Monica Santa Monica (; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Santa Mónica'') is a city in Los Angeles County, California, Los Angeles County, situated along Santa Monica Bay on California's South Coast (California), South Coast. Santa Monica's 2020 United Sta ...

. The company sold products to a local community of audio/video creative professionals until the company made an agreement in 2006 with

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

that greatly increased placement of their products in Apple stores in the United States, and raised their

revenue In accounting, revenue is the total amount of income generated by the sale of product (business), goods and services related to the primary operations of a business. Commercial revenue may also be referred to as sales or as turnover. Some compan ...

from $20,000 a month in 2004 to millions. In January 2008,

Fabrik Inc. Fabrik Inc. was a manufacturer of external hard drives and digital content management software and services. Fabrik claims it was the third largest supplier of external storage products in North America in 2007. It is headquartered in San Mateo, Cal ...

bought G-Technology for an undisclosed amount. That month, the company introduced the world’s first 500 GB 2.5” portable storage drive and the first 1 TB portable external storage drive at

Macworld Expo Macworld/iWorld (originally Macworld) was an information technology trade show with conference tracks dedicated to Apple's Mac platform. It was held annually in the United States during January. Originally ''Macworld Expo'' and then ''Macworld Con ...

. G-Technology announced the first family of external

solid-state drives A solid-state drive (SSD) is a type of solid-state storage device that uses integrated circuits to store data persistently. It is sometimes called semiconductor storage device, solid-state device, or solid-state disk. SSDs rely on non-vo ...

(SSD) at Macworld Expo 09.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies HGST, Inc. (Hitachi Global Storage Technologies) was a manufacturer of hard disk drives, solid-state drives, and external storage products and services. It was initially a subsidiary of Hitachi, formed through its acquisition of IBM's disk driv ...

(HGST) bought Fabrik and its G-Technology brand in 2009. HGST in turn was bought by

in 2012. G-Technology is currently a line of products sold by Western Digital. Starting from 2021, G-Technology is rebranded by Western Digital into SanDisk Professional, while keeping G-Technology Heritage.

Products

SanDisk Professional sells their external storage devices only to professionals under the product lines G-SPEED, G-RAID, G-SAFE, and G-DRIVE. G-RAID is a line of portable external

hard drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating hard disk drive platter, pla ...

products used for field

editing Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written language, written, Image editing, visual, Audio engineer, audible, or Film editing, cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing p ...

and

backup In information technology, a backup, or data backup is a copy of computer data taken and stored elsewhere so that it may be used to restore the original after a data loss event. The verb form, referring to the process of doing so, is "wikt:back ...

for video producers and

camera operators A camera operator, or depending on the context cameraman or camerawoman, is a professional operator of a film camera or video camera as part of a film crew. The term "cameraman" does not necessarily imply that a male is performing the task. D ...

. The line supports

RAID 0 In computer storage, the standard RAID levels comprise a basic set of RAID ("redundant array of independent disks" or "redundant array of inexpensive disks") configurations that employ the techniques of striping, mirroring, or parity to create la ...

( striped volume) and are encased in aircraft-grade

aluminum Aluminium (or aluminum in North American English) is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol Al and atomic number 13. It has a density lower than that of other common metals, about one-third that of steel. Aluminium has ...

for ruggedness. G-RAID drives support multi-stream DV,

HDV HDV is a format for recording of high-definition video on DV (video format), DV videocassette Videotape, tape. Conceived as an affordable high definition format for digital camcorders, HDV quickly caught on with many amateur and professional vi ...

DVCPro DV (from ''Digital Video'') is a family of codecs and tape formats used for storing digital video, launched in 1995 by a consortium of video camera manufacturers led by Sony and Panasonic. It includes the recording or cassette formats DV, Mini ...

HD,

XDCAM XDCAM is a series of products for digital recording using random access solid-state memory media, introduced by Sony in 2003. Four different product lines the XDCAM SD, XDCAM HD, XDCAM EX and XDCAM HD422 differ in types of en ...

HD,

ProRes 422 Apple ProRes is a high quality, " visually lossless" lossy video compression format developed by Apple Inc. for use in post-production that supports video resolution up to 8K. It is the successor of the Apple Intermediate Codec and was introdu ...

and uncompressed SD workflows and can be connected via FireWire 400, FireWire 800 and

USB 2.0 Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard, developed by USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), for digital data transmission and power delivery between many types of electronics. It specifies the architecture, in particular the physical i ...

ports Ports collections (or ports trees, or just ports) are the sets of makefiles and Patch (Unix), patches provided by the BSD-based operating systems, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD, as a simple method of installing software or creating binary packages. T ...

. The line also includes the G-RAID mini, a smaller version with no

power cord A power cord, line cord, or mains cable is an electrical cable that temporarily connects an electrical appliance, appliance to the mains electricity supply via a wall socket or extension cord. The terms are generally used for cables using a AC p ...

, that’s powered by a FireWire plug into a

computer A computer is a machine that can be Computer programming, programmed to automatically Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (''computation''). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic set ...

laptop A laptop computer or notebook computer, also known as a laptop or notebook, is a small, portable personal computer (PC). Laptops typically have a Clamshell design, clamshell form factor (design), form factor with a flat-panel computer scree ...

. This smaller G-RAID mini comes in capacities up to 1TB in a RAID 0 or

RAID 1 In computer storage, the standard RAID levels comprise a basic set of RAID ("redundant array of independent disks" or "redundant array of inexpensive disks") configurations that employ the techniques of striping, mirroring, or parity to create la ...

(

mirroring Mirroring is the behavior in which one person subconsciously imitates the gesture, idiolect, speech pattern, or attitude of another. Mirroring often occurs in social situations, particularly in the company of close friends or family, often going ...

). G-SPEED is designed only for professional content creation applications used to edit and produce

digital video Digital video is an electronic representation of moving visual images (video) in the form of encoded digital data. This is in contrast to analog video, which represents moving visual images in the form of analog signals. Digital video comprises ...

and film productions. The G-SPEED line includes

desktop A desktop traditionally refers to: * The surface of a desk (often to distinguish office appliances that fit on a desk, such as photocopiers and printers, from larger equipment covering its own area on the floor) Desktop may refer to various compu ...

and

server Server may refer to: Computing *Server (computing), a computer program or a device that provides requested information for other programs or devices, called clients. Role * Waiting staff, those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending custome ...

rack-mount A 19-inch rack is a standardized frame or enclosure for mounting multiple electronic equipment modules. Each module has a front panel that is wide. The 19 inch dimension includes the edges or ''ears'' that protrude from each side of the ...

products ranging up to 16TBs using 16

hot-swappable Hot swapping is the replacement or addition of components to a computer system without stopping, shutting down, or rebooting the system. Hot plugging describes only the addition of components to a running computer system. Components which ha ...

drives. The G-SPEED line has high-end performance specifications geared toward content producers, Fibre Channel products, 4GBit connectivity, and more. It also includes the G-SPEED eS, which is a small desktop enclosure with four drives. G-SAFE is optimized for professional digital photographers. It comes with RAID 1 functionality to protect digital photography. G-SAFE products support both FireWire 800 and USB 2.0 connections. G-DRIVE consists of single-drive external storage units that work with both Mac and

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

PCs to offer up to 10 TB capacities. G-DRIVE features support for FireWire 800, FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 connections. (2020 Update. Also Thunderbolt 3, USB 3.0 and USB 3.1 Gen. 1 connections.http://www.g-technology.com/products G-Drive Products) The series also includes the G-DRIVE mini, a smaller version, and the G-DRIVE Q, which has more support options for FireWire 400, FireWire 800, USB 2.0 and eSATA ports in a single unit.

References

External links

* {{Western Digital Manufacturing companies based in San Jose, California Computer-related introductions in 2004

Professional A professional is a member of a profession or any person who work (human activity), works in a specified professional activity. The term also describes the standards of education and training that prepare members of the profession with the partic ...

Western Digital