Corsair Flash Voyager 8GB

Performance:

When reviewing the 8GB Mega-Kart, OCZ engineers had told us that the product was engineered for offering a high storage capacity and not to expect extremely fast file transfers. With the 8GB Flash Voyager, Corsair is claiming 33MB/s read speeds and 16MB/s write speeds. Well, how fast did we find the Corsair 8GB Flash Voyager to be? The average read speed was an impressive 31.63MB/s. The read speeds were tested using hdparm -t, which displays the speed without any prior caching of data and without any file-system overhead. For comparison the read speed for the OCZ Technology Mega-Kart 8GB was 21.71MB/s and the Corsair Flash Voyager 512MB had read at 19.21MB/s. Testing had occurred on a Lenovo ThinkPad T60 notebook with an Intel Core Duo T2400 on Fedora Core 6. When transferring files to the Corsair Flash Voyager 8GB we found the write time to be approximately 15MB/s. For grasping a better idea of the storage capacity, Corsair engineers were successfully able to copy the entire Lord of the Rings Trilogy DVDs over to the CMFUSB2.0-8GB! That is copying over 9 hours of video onto this flash drive. Copying the Lord of the Rings Trilogy over to the 8GB Flash Voyager was done without any form of compression or modification. This is certainly an impressive feat for USB flash drives. For additional comparison, two Linux ISO DVDs can easily be stored on the 8GB Flash Voyager.

Conclusion:

By introducing the Flash Voyager 8GB, Corsair has been successful in redefining USB flash drives. This drive not only offers an impressive 8GB capacity but it is also extremely fast. While OCZ Technology had taken the performance lead when introducing the USB 2.0 Rally, Corsair has today been able to recapture its performance crown. The CMFUSB2.0-8GB is capable of sustaining 33MB/s reads and 16MB/s writes. If the storage capacity and transfer speeds were not enough, the flash drive is backed by an impressive ten year warranty. The 8GB model continues to boast the same features we have seen by the previous Flash Voyager models -- water-proof housing, shock resistant, and excellent Linux compatibility. The Flash Voyager 8GB is available for merely $155 USD, which is truly an incredible deal. The Corsair 8GB Flash Voyager (CMFUSB2.0-8GB) is taking home the Phoronix Editor's Choice Award for raising the flash performance bar and overall being an excellent package. If you're after a high-capacity USB flash drive the Corsair Flash Voyager 8GB is definitely the drive to get, and you won't be disappointed.