Jump to the biline.ca Main SectionJump to the Ottawa, Canada SectionJump to the Audio/Video SectionJump to the X-Box SectionJump to the Xmods Section3D Printing Section


ATI Cards and Macrovision

Securing the Internet and your Computer

How to make a DVD back-up

Monsoon's 2.1 PC Speakers Review

Asus Pundit-R
PC Review

Acer 2200/2203LCi Laptop Review

Zalman Theatre 5.1 Headphone Review

Creative Zen Micro MP3 player Review

PalmOne's Zire 72 PDA Review

Palm's Tungsten T5 PDA Review

Samsung's CLP300 Colour Laser printer Review

Canon 8400F Photo Scanner Review

Canon Selphy CP510 Photo Printer Review

Windows Vista x86 and x64 versions should we upgrade?

SilverStone GD01MX HTPC Case Review

Corsair Survivor GT 8GB USB Flash Drive Review

Mio P550 Digiwalker
GPS PDA Review

Recode DVD's to H.264 with AAC 5.1

Guide to Install OS X 'Leopard' on a PC

Guide to install OS X 'Snow Leopard' PC

Kobo eReader Review

Spyder3TV Review

AVerTV Hybrid Volar MAX Review

Review of the Mediasonic Pro Box 4 Bay Enclosure

netTALK Duo Review

Tablets: Android or Windows 8 and what screen size?



Corsair Survivor GT 8GB USB Flash Drive Review


Click to enlarge

The Corsair Flash Survivor GT is an extremely durable, water resistant, drop-tested flash USB memory drive.
In fact others have dropped the Flash Survivor GT to the bottom of a pool for 30 minutes, put it in a boiling pot of water for over ten minutes, and hit it with a hammer several times! After the abuse the Corsair Flash Survivor GT continued to work as good as new.

The outer case is made from extremely strong CNC-milled, anodized aircraft-grade aluminum. The EPDM (Ethylene Propylene Diene Monomer Rubber) seal makes the Survivor water resistant to 200M! The Survivor is also protected from vibration or impact damage through the use of a molded shock dampening collar and it comes with a Ten year warranty.

Interesting enough Corsair has released two versions:

  • Survivor is a regular version rated at a read speed of 19 MB/sec and a
    write speed of 13 MB/sec
  • Survivor GT is the faster version which is rated at a read speed of 34 MB/sec and a
    write speed of 25 MB/sec.

Obviously the GT is the Turbo version and it also costs a few dollars more, I purchased my Survivor GT from
PC Cyber for a $155 (Cad)

 

So why would anyone want a virtually indestructible USB flash drive?
I have owned quite a few USB flash drives and I have either lost the cap or bent the drive from forgetting it was in my back pocket as I sat down to a rather alarming 'crunch' sound, so my first thought was I shouldn't be able to break this one or loose the cap so easy. I admit the Survivor is overkill but the next closet that I'd consider is the SanDisk 4GB Cruzer Titanium Flash Drive as the connector is retractable and the body is made of metal but it only comes in 4GB version (for now) and I had read that the GT was one of the fastest kids on the block.

Forget the numbers is it really that fast?
Short answer is Yes and to prove it I have done some real world write and read tests with a few other USB flash drives. Before you look at the charts I will mention that the write speed when copying many small files never even reaches a measly 1MB/sec but it bested the slowest drive by a margin of 37 minutes! the chart is below and the best time for each test is indicated in RED

Tests were run on:
Windows XP with SP2
Intel 2.8Ghz HT CPU
1GB Ram and 80GB sata HD
Write
6,989 files (127MB)
Write
339 .jpgs
(174MB)
Write
.avi file
(692MB)
Read
6,989 files
(127MB)
Read
339 .jpgs
(174MB)
Read
.avi file
(692MB)

Kingston Data Traveler 2GB
47 Min
&
11 sec
3 Min
&
2 sec
4 Min
&
34 sec
4 Min
&
2 sec
1 Min
&
47 sec
1 Min
&
2 sec

Apacer Handy Steno 1 GB
34 Min
&
40 sec
2 Min
&
30 sec
2 Min
&
39 sec
6 Min
&
10 sec
2 Min
&
10 sec
2 Min
&
30 sec

OCZ Rally 2 4GB
11 Min
&
15 sec
1 Min
&
14 sec
2 Min
&
10 sec
4 Min
&
6 sec

19 sec
1 Min
&
5 sec

Corsair Survivor GT 8GB
10 Min
&
3 sec

32 sec
1 Min
&
10 sec
2 Min

20 sec

56 sec

The OCZ Rally 4 GB was able to beat the Survivor GT in the 174MB (339.jpgs) test by a mere 1 second but as I'm sure you've noticed the Survivor won the rest of the tests by a fairly wide margin.

I was curious just how fast the Survivor would be compared to other medium so I tried a copying a 4455MB file from the sources listed below

DVD-Drive 5 minutes and 30 seconds 13.6 MB/Sec
USB Portable HD
WD 3.5" IDE 7200 RPM 80GB
3 minutes and 3 seconds 24.4 MB/Sec
Corsair Survivor GT 8GB 3 minutes and 24 seconds 21.8 MB/Sec

The Survivor GT was slightly behind the USB Portable HD at 21.8 MB/Sec and below the rated 34 MB/sec but it comes very close to the HD for read speeds. So lets see what happens when we use the same 4455 MB file for writing to the HD and the Survivor.

USB Portable HD
WD 3.5" IDE 7200 RPM 80GB
3 minutes and 35 seconds 26.7 MB/Sec
Corsair Survivor GT 8GB 4 minutes and 3 seconds 18.7 MB/Sec

The Survivor GT was behind the USB Portable HD at 18.7 MB/Sec and below the rated 25 MB/sec but the tests were run on an average speed system and a faster CPU may bring the speed up a bit but the speeds listed by manufacturers are always theoretical speeds real world speeds are always slower.

So here we have a USB Flash drive that almost performs as well as USB Portable HD and is quite roomy at 8GB. Add the near indestructible metal casing and you have one heck of a piece of portable hardware. Now if they can make a 16GB or 20GB version I might just dump the portable HD forever!




All of the pictures and information contained within the www.biline.ca website are the property of Jeff Mathurin please do NOT use any of the contents of this website without consent. If you would like to contact me for any reason then feel free to use the contact form by clicking Here