Product Details
Corsair 4GB USB 2.0 Rugged, Water and Shock Resistant Flash Drive (CMFUSB2.0-1GB)

Corsair 4GB USB 2.0 Rugged, Water and Shock Resistant Flash Drive (CMFUSB2.0-1GB)
From Corsair

Price: £11.13

Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Dispatched from and sold by PC Parts (UK)

14 new or used available from £5.62

Average customer review:

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #8427 in Consumer Electronics
  • Brand: Corsair
  • Model: CMFUSB2.0-4GB
  • Released on: 2007-01-18
  • Original language: English
  • Dimensions: .39" h x .39" w x .39" l, .44 pounds
  • Memory: 4MB

Features

  • System: MPF
  • Sprache: ML
  • Bussytem: USB
  • Garantie: 120

Editorial Reviews

Manufacturer's Description
The Corsair Flash Voyager family of USB drives is rugged, stylish, compact, and reliable, making them ideal for transporting MP3s, digital images, presentations and more. Flash Voyager drives are fully Plug and Play with most operating systems and are backward compatible with USB 1.1. Their durable rubber casing is easy to grip and water resistant.The Flash Voyager product line is both enclosed in the Corsair proprietary all-rubber Flash Voyager housing. Boasting water-resistant properties, these drives allow users to carry more valuable data and applications without compromise. Several reviews of the Flash Voyager products have demonstrated the ruggedness, durability, and reliability of the Flash Voyager family. The Flash Voyager has been shown laundered, baked, frozen, boiled, dropped, and even run over by a SUV in many third party reviews. After all the punishment it receives, the drive continues to work.


Customer Reviews

Don't be tempted by cheaper options, this is well worth the money.5
Having had a bad experience with a different, cheaper USB pen, it's a relief that this pen actually works - and well!

The casing is nice, a very robust rubber design, although it's not slimline enough to keep it unnoticed in your wallet (though it should fit).

However, the speed is what really matters. Here are the results from some tests I did with various sizes of file:

Writing:
1/16 MB files = 0.4 MB/s
1/4 MB files = 1.6 MB/s
1 MB files = 4.8 MB/s
4 MB files = 11 MB/s
10 MB files = 15 MB/s
50 MB files = 18 MB/s
200 MB files = 18 MB/s

Reading:
1/16 MB files = 12.5 MB/s
1/4 MB files = 25 MB/s
1 MB files = 25 MB/s
4 MB files = 29 MB/s
10 MB files = 24 MB/s
50 MB files = 30 MB/s
200 MB files = 30 MB/s

I can't say why there is a slight drop when reading 10MB files, but as you can see, with raw read/write speeds of 18/30 MB/s, this flash drive is pretty damned good.

The actually capacity of my drive is 3.86 GB, which I think is close enough.

Very fast, waterproof, and it bounces!5
The Corsair comes with a thick rubber skin and, while I haven't tested the "waterproof" claim, I can vouch for the fact that it's shock resistant. The main benefit is its speed - I thought all USB memory keys were pretty much the same, but when I bought one of these I noticed that it was MUCH faster than either of my old memory sticks. Geek that I am, I did a quick test by writing 500-ish music files (just under 3GB) onto the Corsair and then writing the same files to another "high-speed" 4GB USB2 stick. It took just over ten minutes to write 3GB onto the Corsair, and well over twenty minutes to write the same data to the other key. Recommended.

Mostly impressed5
In comparison to the Sandisk Cruzer 2.0GB I'd been previously using, there are pros and cons to this drive.
On the minus side, the drive is way larger than the Snadisk. I'm not convinced by the need for all the rubber protection, these things are pretty much bomb-proof anyway (certainly the Sandisk was pocket-proof after the odd periodic removal of stray lint), so it's bigger and more awakward than it needs to be.
On the plus side - and the reason for buying it, after reading the other reviews here, and in preference to the 8,16 and 32GB drives - it is properly fast. Write speed is waay faster than the Sandisk, and writing hundreds of MBs of data to the drive is nowhere near the toil it used to be.

The only other downsides are the cost and shipping. It got such a good write-up, I bought 2 - one as a scratch disk and one to use as a fairly permanent store of important data. Price was great, but the shipping was rubbish in two respects. Firstly, the shipping cost entirely negated the cheap advertised price of the drive, but secondly- worst of all - this price was indicative of the source of the sender. Germany. Which meant I had to wait a week for the flipping things to arrive and, having rashly given my daughter the Sandisk for school and having allowed the boss to swipe my other one for a customer demo, I was without portable storage for an uncomfortable week.
Yes, my own fault, totally admit it, but it would be so much nicer if Amazon got a stock of the things in stock, so we could get reasonable delivery prices and times. Sadly, this is the same case for the vast majority of the drives advertised on Amazon.

WAfter all that, the burning question is "Would I buy another?" Definitely. It could be better, but the speed/price ratio is unbeatable and, if you must play rugby with the thing, it's suitably rugged.