USER MANUAL G DRIVE with Thunderbolt™ Portable Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 Drive g-technology.
G DRIVE Table of Contents with Thunderbolt™ Table of Contents Safety & General Use Safety Precautions.................................................... 4 Backup Your Data..................................................... 5 About Your G-DRIVE mobile Introduction............................................................... 7 What’s in the Box ..................................................... 8 System Requirements............................................. 8 Overview of the Drive ..............
G DRIVE with Thunderbolt™ Safety & General Use Safety Precautions ......................................... p.4 • Backup Your Data ........................................... p.
G DRIVE Safety & General Use with Thunderbolt™ Safety Precautions The warranty on G-DRIVE® mobile with Thunderbolt™ may be void as a result of the failure to respect the precautions listed here. If you detect a problem with your drive, please contact our Technical Support department. If the product is returned with damage caused by improper handling, the warranty will be void and liability will rest with the user. Please read our Limited Warranty.
G DRIVE Safety & General Use with Thunderbolt™ Backup Your Data The disk drive contained in your G-DRIVE mobile with Thunderbolt device is a delicate electronic instrument and is susceptible to damage due to excessive physical shock. Under no circumstances will G-Technology® be held liable for the recovery or restoration of lost data. Any loss, corruption or destruction of data while using a G-Technology drive is the sole responsibility of the user.
G DRIVE with Thunderbolt™ About Your G-DRIVE mobile with Thunderbolt Introduction .................................................... p.7 • What’s in the Box .......................................... p.8 • System Requirements ................................. p.8 • Overview of the Drive ................................. p.9 • Easy Installation for Mac ............................ p.9 • Disconnect the Drive ................................. p.
G DRIVE About G-DRIVE mobile with Thunderbolt with Thunderbolt™ Introduction Thank you for purchasing G-DRIVE mobile with Thunderbolt from G-Technology. It’s the ultra-stylish portable storage solution for laptop users, featuring ultra-fast Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 interfaces.
G DRIVE About G-DRIVE mobile with Thunderbolt with Thunderbolt™ What’s in the Box The following items are included in the box—if any items are missing, please contact G-Technology at g-technology.com/support. • G-DRIVE mobile with Thunderbolt • (1) Thunderbolt cable • (1) USB 3.0 cable (2.0 compatible) • Quick Start Guide System Requirements The drive is set up at the factory for use with Mac OS® systems, formatted as ‘HFS+ with Journaling’, and supports the following Operating Systems: Mac: Mac OS 10.
G DRIVE About G-DRIVE mobile with Thunderbolt with Thunderbolt™ Overview of the Drive Your G-DRIVE mobile with Thunderbolt is designed for ultimate simplicity. The Power & Activity LED on the front of the unit will glow when power is applied via the Thunderbolt or USB port. The light will flash more brightly as data is transferred to or from the hard drive. One Thunderbolt and one USB port are located on the rear panel of the drive’s aluminum housing.
G DRIVE About G-DRIVE mobile with Thunderbolt with Thunderbolt™ Disconnecting the Drive A great feature of G-DRIVE mobile with Thunderbolt is its ability to be connected and disconnected while your computer is running. However, to prevent failures and/or data loss, it is important to follow the steps below when disconnecting or ‘unmounting’ the drive from your computer.  1.
G DRIVE with Thunderbolt™ Using Your Drive with Mac OS Use with Time Machine ............................. p.12 • Initialize Drive for Mac ............................... p.14 • Restore the Drive Icon ............................... p.17 • Reformat with Partitions ........................... p.
G DRIVE Using Your Drive with Mac OS® with Thunderbolt™ Use with Time Machine G-DRIVE mobile with Thunderbolt works seamlessly with Time Machine, the easy-to-use application that ships with your Mac and provides automatic backup for your files. The following steps will quickly set up your drive for use with Time Machine. 1. When you connect your drive for the first time, the Time Machine dialog box should automatically appear. Click the ‘Use as Backup Disk’ button. 2.
G DRIVE Using Your Drive with Mac OS® with Thunderbolt™ 3. In the dialog box that appears, select your G-DRIVE mobile with Thunderbolt, then click the Use for Backup button. 4. Make sure the Time Machine switch is set to ON, then click the Options button to choose volumes, folders or files you do NOT want to backup. G-DRIVE mobile with Thunderbolt will now use Time Machine to back up your important files automatically. It’s that easy! p.
G DRIVE Using Your Drive with Mac OS® with Thunderbolt™ Initialize Drive for Mac G-DRIVE mobile with Thunderbolt has been factory-formatted, or ‘initialized’, for use with Mac OS. Should you wish to reinitialize the drive—and quickly erase all contents of the drive—here are the steps: 1. First, open the Disk Utility program, located on your hard drive under Applications/ Utilities/Disk Utility.
G DRIVE Using Your Drive with Mac OS® with Thunderbolt™ 4. Click the Format pop-up and choose the Format option that you prefer: • Mac OS Extended (Journaled): Select this format if you intend to use the drive for Time Machine or to create a separate, bootable installation of the OS. • Mac OS Extended: Use this format for best performance and media storage. 5. Click the Erase button in the lower right corner of the window.
G DRIVE Using Your Drive with Mac OS® with Thunderbolt™ WARNING: THIS NEXT STEP WILL ERASE ALL DATA ON YOUR DRIVE. 6. Click on the Erase button to continue. A progress bar in the lower right corner of the window will show the progress of the disk’s reformatting. 7. After the drive is reinitialized, you should automatically see the Time Machine dialog box. • Click the ‘Use as Backup Disk’ button if you want to use the drive with Time Machine. For more about using the drive with Time Machine, go here.
G DRIVE Using Your Drive with Mac OS® with Thunderbolt™ Restore the Drive Icon If the drive icon for your G-DRIVE mobile with Thunderbolt was erased during the reinitialization process (see previous section), you can restore the icon by following these easy steps: NOTE: This process is not required for the operation of G-DRIVE mobile with Thunderbolt. However, it will make your drive’s appearance on the computer desktop look cleaner and more accurate. 1.
G DRIVE Using Your Drive with Mac OS® with Thunderbolt™ 4. Select the icon for G-DRIVE mobile with Thunderbolt on your desktop and press Command+I. This opens its Get Info window. (below left) 5. Select the default icon in the Get Info window. (below left) 6. Press Command+V to paste the custom G-DRIVE mobile with Thunderbolt icon into the Get Info window. (below right) The icon for your G-DRIVE mobile with Thunderbolt has been restored and you can close the Get Info window.
G DRIVE Using Your Drive with Mac OS® with Thunderbolt™ Reformat with Partitions ‘Partitioning’ a hard drive is the process of dividing a hard drive into separate, discrete sections called ‘volumes’. Each volume works like a separate disk. You can create up to 16 different partitions on a hard drive in the OS and each partition can be a different size and format. With hard drives getting bigger, it can be useful to partition your hard drive to use sections of its space for different purposes.
G DRIVE Using Your Drive with Mac OS® with Thunderbolt™ 2. Select the Thunderbolt or USB icon—not the G-Technology drive icon—by clicking it in the left-side column. 3. Click on the Partition button in the main window. 4. Select the number of partitions you would like from the Volume Scheme menu. Below, we have selected ‘2 Partitions’ to create two partitions. p.
G DRIVE Using Your Drive with Mac OS® with Thunderbolt™ 5. C lick on the first partition in the Volume Scheme area. Your partition will be highlighted by a blue bounding box. • In the Name field, type a name for the partition. • From the Format menu, choose your desired disk format. If you will use your drive primarily on Mac OS, it is recommended to use Mac OS Extended or Mac OS Extended (Journaled). For info about formats, go here. • In the Size field, type in a size for the partition.
G DRIVE Using Your Drive with Mac OS® with Thunderbolt™ 8. Click on the Partition button to continue. A progress bar in the lower right corner of the window will display your disk’s reformatting progress. 9. When partitioning is complete, the multiple partitions will be displayed in the left-hand panel of Disk Utility. 10. Quit the Disk Utility program. After reinitializing the drive, the custom icon for the G-Technology drive has been erased.
G DRIVE with Thunderbolt™ Using Your Drive on Windows® Windows Use ................................................. p.24 • Cross Platform Use ...................................... p.
G DRIVE Using Your Drive on Windows® with Thunderbolt™ Windows Use Although G-DRIVE mobile with Thunderbolt has been set up at the factory for use with Mac OS systems, a simple initialization will prepare your drive for use with Windows 7 and Vista systems. For helpful information on configuring and using your drive with Windows, please visit g-technology.com/support. p.
G DRIVE Using Your Drive on Windows® with Thunderbolt™ Cross Platform Use You can set up G-DRIVE mobile with Thunderbolt for use on both Windows and Mac systems by formatting the drive as ‘Fat32’. To do this, use the Disk Utility application and format the drive to MS-DOS® (Fat), also known as Fat32. 1. First, open the Disk Utility program. This application is located on your hard drive under Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility. The window below will appear.
G DRIVE Using Your Drive on Windows® with Thunderbolt™ 4. Select ‘MS-DOS® File System’ from the Format pop-up menu. This will format the drive to Fat32. NOTE: You may need to rename the drive because Fat32 does not support more than 11 letters in the drive name. 5. Click the ‘Erase’ button in the lower right corner of the window. A dialog box will appear asking if you want to erase the G-DRIVE mobile with Thunderbolt partition. p.
G DRIVE Using Your Drive on Windows® with Thunderbolt™ WARNING: THIS NEXT STEP WILL ERASE ALL DATA ON YOUR DRIVE. 6. Click the Erase button. A progress bar in the lower right corner of the window will show the progress of the disk reformatting, and your drive will be formatted to its full capacity as Fat32. 7. Quit the Disk Utility program. You are finished! 8. After reinitializing, the custom icon for the G-DRIVE mobile with Thunderbolt will be erased. No icons are available for Fat32.
G DRIVE with Thunderbolt™ Support & Warranty Technical Support ....................................... p.29 • Limited Warranty ......................................... p.30 • Copyright ........................................................ p.
G DRIVE Support & Warranty with Thunderbolt™ Technical Support Thank you again for purchasing G-DRIVE mobile with Thunderbolt—if you have any comments or questions about this manual or the product, please let us know! At G-Technology, we appreciate and value our customers, and strive to give you the finest quality products, service and support. If you encounter any difficulties while installing or using G-DRIVE mobile with Thunderbolt, please contact G-Technology Technical Support at www.g-technology.
G DRIVE Support & Warranty with Thunderbolt™ Limited Warranty HGST, a Western Digital Company (“HGST”) Including G-Technology for External Hard Disk Drives What does this limited warranty cover? This Limited Warranty applies to new HGST products purchased from an authorized HGST dealer by the original purchaser for normal use and not for resale. HGST warrants that a covered product is free from defects in materials and workmanship, with the exceptions stated below.
G DRIVE Support & Warranty with Thunderbolt™ What must you do? If you are having trouble with a product, before seeking limited warranty service, first follow the troubleshooting procedures that HGST or your reseller provides. To obtain limited warranty service, you must first obtain a Return Materials Authorization (RMA) and ship-to address by contacting G-Technology at g-technology.com/support. Please follow the instructions found on the website.
G DRIVE Support & Warranty with Thunderbolt™ CAPACITY DEFINITION AND DISCLAIMER For G-Technology products 1TB or greater: “One gigabyte (GB) is equal to one billion bytes and one terabyte (TB) equals 1,000 GB (one trillion bytes).
