What is this?
When every thumbdrive is made of plastic, Corsair wraps their Flash Voyager, including the cap, with rubber. This makes the USB flash drive a true water-resistant portable storage. What's more? The 512MB drive tops at 19MB/s read, 13MB/s write, and comes with ten-year warranty. While the drive hides the partition with password, there doesn't seem to have AES encryption.
Pros: Water resistant; shock proof; bundled accessories; ten-year warranty.
Cons: Relatively low endurance level; average software.
Verdict: The Corsair Flash Voyager has the good looks and very solid build, but its software could use some improvements and more features.
Every company, either small OEM or giant, has been riding the popularity of USB flash drives to extend its brand recognition or to push boost sales. So, when everyone jumps onto the bandwagon, it's rather difficult for a product to stand out in the crowd unless you have something radically different. Corsair tries to do that by wrapping its first USB flash drive, Flash Voyager, with a material that been used before in this type of product.
Package Content - Corsair Flash Voyager 512MB
- 8cm CD
- USB extension cable
- Lanyard
Rubber Rocks The Flash Voyager (512MB reviewed), encased in a rubberized case, proves to be more practical than plastic or brushed titanium. First, its elastic body can absorb any shock resulted from a drop, protecting the USB connector and the NAND memory from harms. It is also immune from any scratches due to the nature of the material. Moreover, the leak-free case ensures drive is water-resistant. That only leaves the USB connector exposed when the cap is removed. Even though most flash drives would survive a submerge, but you would need to wait for them to dry first. As a note, the drive doesn't like to be bent. This is perhaps a trivial matter unless someone deliberately tries to destroy the Flash Voyager.
Accessories Corsair generously ships with a 2 ft. USB extension cable and a ribbon blue lanyard, both of which should be standard, but most manufacturers skip on these. The loophole is on the body for a good reason as swinging the Flash Voyager with the cap hooked to a lanyard could result in the drive itself flying. The LED, which grows in blue during read & write activity, is also a nice touch. In terms of size, the Flash Voyager measures at 3" x 1" x 0.5", about the same as that of the Kingston Data Traveler Elite and Sandisk Cruzer Titanium. Lastly, a ten-year warranty should give you some assurance in case something goes wrong with the drive.
Software The Flash Voyager is accompanied by basic software suite. You get a control panel that allows you to create an additional partition, to password protect the second partition, to prepare a bootable drive, and to format the drive in FAT. On the down side, the software doesn't encrypt data so you are probably better off with other encryption utilities, and it must also be installed on the computers before the drive accepts your password. You'll need to supply your own Windows 98 boot disk to complete the boot disk creation.
Performance Corsiar's Flash Voyager is rated at 19MB/s read, 13MB/s write. In our repeated tests with Sandra 2005, the 512MB Hi-Speed USB flash drive comes out to what we expected at performing small file (32KB/s) tests. It started to pick up when working on larger files. When completing 64MB tests, the flash drive topped at 18MB/s read and 12MB/s write, close to the advertised speeds. However, the alow 512B file transfer dragged down the overall combined index, and the endurance factor at 8.8 was relatively low for a recently announced flash drive. Most flash drives tested finished between 20 to 33, which according to Sandra publisher, SiSoftware, reveals the relative life expectency when two figures put to comparison.
(As a note, companies sometimes stealthly switch NAND memory supplies for improving flash drive quality or solving supply shortage. So, these figures maybe different by the time you get your drive.)
Sandra 2005 Data Benchmark Results
Combined Index : 4852 operation(s)/min
Endurance Factor : 8.7
512B Files Test : 3608 operation(s)/min
32kB Files Test : 8110 operation(s)/min
256kB Files Test : 3070 operation(s)/min
2MB Files Test : 482 operation(s)/min
64MB Files Test : 16 operation(s)/min
Performance Test Status
Run ID : MACHINE on Thursday, 17 March, 2005 at 10:58:52
SMP Test : No
Total Test Threads : 1
SMT Test : No
Dynamic MP/MT Load Balance : No
Processor Affinity : No
Windows 98 SE, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP, MacOS 10.3.x, MacOS 10.2.x, MacOS 10.1.x, MacOS 9.1
Dimensions
3.05" x 0.95" x 0.5"
Capacity
512MB
Read performance Average substained rate
19MB/s
Write performance Average substained rate
13MB/s
Data protection method
Password protect
Software
Boot, password protection, partition
Additional media compatibility
None
Accessories
Lanyard, 2 ft. USB extension cable
Extra function(s)
--
Material of casing
--
Power source
Bus-powered
Warranty
Ten years
Extras Lost a USB cable? Get a replacement USB cable.
Running out of USB ports? Get an extra USB hub.
You may need a new USB card to achieve Hi-Speed USB speeds.
Confirm with our USB 2.0 FAQ if you have Hi-Speed USB on your PC.
The Flash Voyager (512MB reviewed), encased in a rubberized case, proves to be more practical than plastic or brushed titanium. First, its elastic body can absorb any shock resulted from a drop, protecting the USB connector and the NAND memory from harms. It is also immune from any scratches due to the nature of the material. Moreover, the leak-free case ensures drive is water-resistant. That only leaves the USB connector exposed when the cap is removed. Even though most flash drives would survive a submerge, but you would need to wait for them to dry first. As a note, the drive doesn't like to be bent. This is perhaps a trivial matter unless someone deliberately tries to destroy the Flash Voyager.
