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

Western Digital Western Digital Corporation (WDC, commonly known as Western Digital or WD) is an American computer drive manufacturer and data storage company, headquartered in San Jose, California. It designs, manufactures and sells data technology produc ...

that produces external storage products designed and marketed for the

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...

, creative pro,

photography Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable 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 employed ...

and A/V markets. Its

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad v ...

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 an ...

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 to ...

, SAS,

SCSI Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, electrical, optical and logical interface ...

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 servers in storage area networks (SAN) in commercial data cen ...

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 * Garage (residential), a storage space normally used to store car ...

optimized for

digital content creation Content creation is the contribution of information to any media and most especially to digital media for an end-user/audience in specific contexts. Content is "something that is to be expressed through some medium, as speech, writing or any of ...

, was sold to

Avid Technology Avid Technology is an American technology and multimedia company based in Burlington, Massachusetts, and founded in August 1987 by Bill Warner. It specialises in audio and video; specifically, digital non-linear editing (NLE) systems, video edi ...

.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, RAID or Raids may refer to: Attack * Raid (military), a sudden attack behind the enemy's lines without the intention of holding ground * Corporate raid, a type of hostile takeover in business * Panty raid, a prankish raid by male college ...

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 entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend t ...

just blocks from his house in

Santa Monica Santa Monica (; Spanish: ''Santa Mónica'') is a city in Los Angeles County, situated along Santa Monica Bay on California's South Coast. Santa Monica's 2020 U.S. Census population was 93,076. Santa Monica is a popular resort town, owing to ...

. 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 an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...

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 goods and services related to the primary operations of the business. Commercial revenue may also be referred to as sales or as turnover. Some companies receive reven ...

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, w ...

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 was an information technology trade show with conference tracks dedicated to the Apple Macintosh platform. It was held annually in the United States during January. Originally ''Macworld Expo'' and then ''Macworld Conference & Expos ...

. G-Technology announced the first family of external

solid-state drives A solid-state drive (SSD) is a solid-state storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies to store data persistently, typically using flash memory, and functioning as secondary storage in the hierarchy of computer storage. It is a ...

(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 dr ...

(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 for 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 platters coated with magnet ...

products used for field

editing Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, photographic, visual, audible, or cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing process can involve correction, condensation, orga ...

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 "back up", w ...

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 imply that a male is performing the task. In filmmaking ...

. 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 l ...

( striped volume) and are encased in aircraft-grade

aluminum Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. It has ...

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

HDV HDV is a format for recording of high-definition video on DV cassette tape. The format was originally developed by JVC and supported by Sony, Canon, and Sharp. The four companies formed the HDV Consortium in September 2003. Conceived as an af ...

DVCPro DV refers to 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. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, DV was strongly associated with the t ...

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 introduced ...

and uncompressed SD workflows and can be connected via

FireWire 400 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 an ...

FireWire 800 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 an ...

and

USB 2.0 Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad v ...

ports A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as Ham ...

. 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 appliance to the mains electricity supply via a wall socket or extension cord. The terms are generally used for cables using a power plug to connect t ...

, that’s powered by a FireWire plug into a

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

laptop A laptop, laptop computer, or notebook computer is a small, portable personal computer (PC) with a screen and alphanumeric keyboard. Laptops typically have a clam shell form factor with the screen mounted on the inside of the upper li ...

. 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 l ...

(

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

). G-SPEED is designed 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 functionality for other programs or devices, called clients Role * Waiting staff, those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending customers and su ...

rack-mount 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 the addition of components only. Components which have such functionality are said ...

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 group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

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 works in a specified professional activity. The term also describes the standards of education and training that prepare members of the profession with the particular knowledge and skil ...