G Drive Slim very slow on iMac

G-Technology G-DRIVE
1

I am getting less than 100MB/s using Black Magic Speed Test from my G Drive Slim attached to my 2017 iMac using USB 3.0. I get faster transfer times from some of my hard drives. Any thoughts as to why that might be?

2

Hi @budkuenzli,

Is your G-DRIVE Slim an HDD (hard disk drive) or SSD (solid state drive) model?

What are the approximate speeds you are seeing?

Cheers,

Jack

3

Jack,

It is an SSD. Last time I ran Blackmagic Disk Speed Test the write speed was under 100MB/s. This time the write is 220.8 and the read is 429.9 Perhaps that is not out of bounds but the write speed is slower than I expected.

thanks,
bud

IMG_5956.jpeg

4

Keep an eye on the performance. If it continues to perform lower than expected, try to reformat the drive using Disk Utility. Reformatting does erase all data on the G-DRIVE, so back it up.

Steps to Erase (format) using Disk Utility:

  1. Go to Disk Utility (Finder > Go > Utilities)
  2. In Disk Utility, select “View” > “Show All Devices”.
  3. Select the top and non-indented drive in the external section of Disk Utility that matches the name of your external drive.
  4. Click Erase
  5. Name: any name you want
  6. Format: Use APFS if available, if not use Mac OS Extended (Journaled). If you plan to use the G-DRIVE for Time Machine, use Mac OS Extended (Journaled) if you are using macOS Catalina or earlier, or APFS if you are using macOS Big Sur or later.
  7. Scheme: GUID Partition Map
  8. Click Erase (this will erase all data!)

Cheers,

Jack

5

Jack,

I get the same speeds with a freshly formatted GDrive. Odd that other folks on the net with similar USB 3.0 equipped Macs report 310 Write speeds.

bud