Product Description

The Corsair Flash Survivor is extremely durable, water resistant, drop-tested flash USB memory drive. It delivers the highest value/performance solution for a rugged USB drive. From it's CNC-milled, 6061 Type 2 Aluminum enclosure to the EDPM waterproof seal, the Flash Survivor is built for action. "Flash Survivor - BRING IT ON!"

Product Details

• Size: 16GB
• Brand: Corsair
• Model: CMFUSBSRVR-16GB
• Platform: Windows
• Format: CD
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.25" h x 5.50" w x 8.00" l, .27 pounds

Features

• memory: 16GB
• Rugged - Aluminum aircraft casing
• Water Resistant - EPDM waterproof sealed for depths up to 200M
• Shock Protection - Molded shock-dampening collar
• Plug-n-Play - Compatible with any USB 2.0 Certified

Customer Reviews

Speedy reads, slow writes, but rock solid
Purchased this for use with a MacBook Pro. As formatted from the factory, it was fast for reading any kind of files, and for writing large (multi-megabyte) files, but painfully slow for writing many small files. Benchmarking tools (and most online reviews) don't appear to pick up this random small file problem.

Since I don't need to use it in a Windows environment, I reformatted the device as a Mac OS Journaled GUID partition, and the write speeds improved somewhat. I then created a 31 GB "sparse bundle" image on it, which is a OS X "Leopard" technology that makes a growable disk image of many 8 MB chunks. This seemed to accelerate writes significantly, but still nowhere near the maker's claimed write performance.

For Mac users who have no plans to plug it into a PC, I recommend reformatting it. As a bonus, if you create a sparse bundle disk image, you can set that disk image to be AES-128 or AES-256 encrypted, giving you peace of mind in case you lose or misplace the USB drive.

I'm very happy with the apparent durability, and very happy with the read speed. I'm less happy with the write speed, but since I'm using it for write-once/read-many type of backups, it's okay.

Note that flash memory technology for sizes 8 GB and up is different than the 4 GB and smaller drives, and all manufacturers making this size seem to share this "slow for small files" problem when doing "real world" file tests instead of benchmarks.

A Must Buy!
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R23J1GI621319T My video of the Corsair Survivor 8Gb flash drivr

Tough, but connectivity issues surfaced
No doubt, the case is as tough as available, and few alternatives offer the storage of 16GB - two features which may be enough for most. But, the first unit I had died on day two (Corsair replaced no questions asked), and the replacement unit I received has had intermittent connectivity issues with my USB ports. Sometimes you plug it in and the device is recognized, and sometimes you have to reset the computer or dive into Device Manager.
Transfer speed has varied between 1.5 - 2.0 MB per second.