CES 2009

We're noticing more and more solid-state drives enter the mainstream market; the Intel X-25M drive's blazing fast transfer speed and completely unaffordable price tag felt bittersweet, but the prices aren't quite as bad for lesser quality drives like the Patriot Warp V.2. SSDs are popping up more often in the world of Netbooks, but we rarely see standalone external SSD.

Luckily, G-Technology made good use of this year's Macworld Expo by introducing a new family of external solid-state hard drives. Both the G-Drive mini SSD and the RAID 0/1 G-RAID mini SSD use 2.5-inch internal SSDs that benefit from higher performance scores, vastly increased durability, less power consumption, and an overall quieter operation. The new drives are ready to use with Macs right out of the box thanks to the HFS+ preformatting, and since SSDs lack moving parts, on-the-go data mongers can easily throw the drives in their equipment bag without fear of destruction.

The G-Drive mini is available in up to 250GB capacities, and users have the option of connecting to their computers via FireWire 800, FireWire 400, and USB 2.0. The drive is powered by the USB bus as well, so no external power is required to access your data. Finally, G-Technology reports a 60 megabytes per second write speed and 75 megabytes per second read speed. Thankfully, both drives are available now and come with a three-year manufacturer's warranty, and prices for each start at $599 for the mini and $1,299 for the G-Raid mini.