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Corsair Flash Voyager GT USB Thumb Drive
 
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Max Slowik
Brian
Corsair
Jul. 14, 2009
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Introduction

Corsair's got a cute rubber flash drive on their hands, I gotta say. Black with red and yellow highlights, the GT looks fairly swift. It's ruggedized and water-resistant, without frills, except maybe the blue LED.

I like the design, although I do see a couple of points of failure. The rubber cap comes off completely and I lost track of it several times during the review, but at least it's not likely to break if you step on it. Same thing goes for the whole device, actually. Another curiosity is the loop where the lanyard attaches. It's basically a whole punched through the rubber and I'll bet if you tug on it hard it'll snap.



The lanyard and the hook aren't hardened for too much stress, but I'd say anyone who breaks those is actually trying to. I went ahead and tossed it in a wash and dry cycle and it came out none the worse for wear, so if it's just a flash drive you expect to keep in a bag you'll never in a million years break it.

Included with the flash drive was an outdated copy of TrueCrypt, which is open-source data protection software. If you’re interested in it, get the more recent software from that link.

It's simple, not too small, and comes with a ten-year warrantee, just in case.



Testing

I tested the drive in the most common sensical way: copying files to and from it, timing things with a stopwatch. I tested the read and write speeds four different ways, first with a CD-sized single file, an ISO, to check large file sizes. For medium file sizes, I transferred a folder full of 10MB raw images, for small files, I used a folder of about 1.5MB .jpg images, and for tiny files, I used a folder full of Windows system files averaging 20K each.

680 MB (680 MB Files)
(Show All Graphs)
Read Write
Corsair Voyager GT
OCZ Rally 2
Corsair Survivor
PNY Attache
27.55
27.2
27.2
20
0
MB/s (higher is better)
31.6825
 
 
Read Write
Corsair Survivor
OCZ Rally 2
PNY Attache
Corsair Voyager GT
10.79
10.3
9.06
4.59
0
MB/s (higher is better)
31.6825
 
 

500 MB (10 MB Files)
(Show All Graphs)
Read Write
Corsair Survivor
OCZ Rally 2
Corsair Voyager GT
PNY Attache
26.31
26.3
21.73
18.51
0
MB/s (higher is better)
30.2565
 
 
Read Write
PNY Attache
OCZ Rally 2
Corsair Voyager GT
Corsair Survivor
7.69
7.24
5.43
4.23
0
MB/s (higher is better)
30.2565
 
 

250 MB (1.5 MB Files)
(Show All Graphs)
Read Write
OCZ Rally 2
Corsair Voyager GT
PNY Attache
Corsair Survivor
27.7
19.23
17.85
15.63
0
MB/s (higher is better)
31.855
 
 
Read Write
PNY Attache
OCZ Rally 2
Corsair Survivor
Corsair Voyager GT
5
2.97
1.98
1.92
0
MB/s (higher is better)
31.855
 
 

250 MB (20 KB Files)
(Show All Graphs)
Read Write
OCZ Rally 2
Corsair Voyager GT
Corsair Survivor
PNY Attache
9.25
8.62
8.33
8.3
0
MB/s (higher is better)
10.6375
 
 
Read Write
OCZ Rally 2
PNY Attache
Corsair Survivor
Corsair Voyager GT
2.97
1.85
0.66
0.33
0
MB/s (higher is better)
10.6375
 
 

As far as performance goes, it's not shabby at any of the read transfer speeds, hanging around 20MB/s for medium and small files, and 8MB/s for tiny and large files. This would be excellent if the speeds were maintained across files of all sizes.

Writing is a different story, unfortunately, and the memory stick just barely got around 5MB/s, with much lower transfer speeds for small and tiny files.

Conclusion

The numbers make this an excellent drive for average-sized files, such as photos and documents, but not great for movies and disk images. Because the read and write speeds are particularly low with tiny files, you probably wouldn't want to use this for booting a live OS from.

This is an excellent everyday-type flash drive, best suited for regular use and literally taking your data around with you, without worrying about it getting damaged.

 
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