A couple of months ago during IBC 2023, we teamed up with Western Digital to take a look at the company’s extensive products for the photo and video community under the Sandisk Professional brand.
Sandisk Professional – a Brief History
For those who are unfamiliar with the SanDisk Professional brand, here is a quick reminder taken from our IBC 2022 coverage of the company’s lineup.
What is SanDisk Professional and where did it come from? A little history first. Sandisk was acquired by Western Digital in 2016 and WD decided to keep the familiar brand name. WD currently sells products under both the WD brand and Sandisk brand for somewhat different market segments.
Going even further back in time, in 2009 Hitachi acquired a company called Fabrik Inc. from San Mateo, California. Fabrik developed the G-Technology drives for professional users which quickly became an industry standard for a lot of productions. When Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST) itself was acquired by WD in around 2012, G-Technology continued to operate under WD as a separate division.
Fast forward to 2021 and WD announced that the G-Technology brand will now be called SanDisk Professional and continue to market some of the same products but will also introduce new ones for professional users, content creators, etc. Quite a few of them are shown in the video above.
2023 Sandisk Professional lineup
During IBC 2023 we talked to Ruben Dennenwaldt, Head of Product Marketing & Marketing Operations EU/CIS at Western Digital about the new product announcements from Sandisk at the show including the new SanDisk Professional G-DRIVE Project, SanDisk Professional G-RAID Mirror and the two PRO-CINEMA CFexpress Type B memory cards (320GB/640GB).
Dennenwaldt also gave us a rundown of the current SanDisk Professional lineup and here are the main products shown in the video.
- Sandisk Professional PRO-G40 SSD – This portable SSD which we have reviewed here in the past has dual TB 3 (40Gbps) and USB-C (10Gbps) support with IP68 dust/Water Resistance and comes in up to 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB.
The PRO-G40 SSD
- SanDisk Professional PRO-Blade Transport – Part of the SanDisk Professional Blade product line, this unit loads a PRO-BLADE SSD mag to get a portable SSD with USB-C (20Gbps) speeds up to 2000MB/s read and write.
- SanDisk Professional PRO-Blade SSD Mag – The actual Blade media. Up to 3000MB/s transfer speeds with 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities.
- SanDisk Professional G-Drive – This is the newest generation of the industry’s tried and true workhorse. It now comes in capacities of 4TB-22TB with enterprise-class Ultrastar 7200RPM drive inside.
- SanDisk Professional – PRO-Dock 4 – This compact reader works exclusively with SanDisk Professional PRO-READER devices, and can use SD/micSD reader units, Multi card, CFast, CFExpress B, Red Mini, etc. (we are still waiting for a Sony CF-A unit).
The PRO-Dock 4
- SanDisk Professional G-Drive Project – This unit is a full metal storage unit (very well-made and aesthetic) with a single mechanical hard drive built-in (6-22TB). The unique feature of this drive is the inclusion of a single PRO-BLADE SSD Mag slot. This turns this drive into a hybrid drive incorporating both fast SSD (up to 4TB) and a large storage pool (again up to 22TB). The main use case for such a hybrid drive is for professional workloads such as editing videos where you need both the ultra-fast speeds of an NVME SSD (up to 10Gbps) of the PRO-BLADE SSD Mag and the large capacity for long-term storage/archiving. On the back of the unit, you will find two TB3 ports (so you can daisy chain several units as well as a Kensington lock and a power button, DC connector, and LED button.
- SanDisk Professional G-RAID Mirror – This unit is very similar to the G-DRIVE Project however it includes not one but two HHDs inside in a user-configurable 0/1 RIAD (using switches on the back of the unit). The available capacities of the G-RAID Mirror are 12TB to 44TB and both the G-DRIVE PROJECT and G-RAID Mirror use 7200RPM Ultrastar enterprise-class hard drives from Western Digital.
Official G-RAID Mirror video
- SanDisk Professional G-RAID Shuttle – large capacity professional 4 bay Thunderbolt 3-based storage solution with 24TB, 48TB, and 72TB versions.
- SanDisk Professional PRO-Cinema CFexpress Type B – These are new cards announced at IBC 2023 and promise very fast sustained write speeds of 1400 MB/s and, thanks to the VPG-400 standard, write speeds are guaranteed to always be above 400 MB/s. The cards can also withstand drops from up to 1m/3.3′ and up to 50N of force. The cards come in 320GB and 640GB versions.
* This video was sponsored by Western Digital.
Iddo Genuth 
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