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Review: Corsair Flash Survivor 32GB |
Corsair was kind enough to send us their Flash Survivor drive for review. The Flash Survivor has a storage capacity of 32GB and has a USB 2 host interface for connection to a PC or MAC.
In this review we will test the performance of the Flash Survivor 32GB USB flash drive.
Corsair Company Information
Products to Meet the Demands of Performance Computing
Corsair has been a leader in the design and manufacture of high-speed modules since 1994. Our focus has always been on supporting the special demands of mission-critical servers and high-end workstations, as well as the performance demands of extreme gamers. While maintaining this core focus, in recent years, we've also brought our expertise, technology leadership and legendary quality and reliability to memory and other technology products for the more mainstream consumer.
Memory That Meets The Toughest Demands
As a pioneer in high-speed module design, Corsair is a trusted supplier to many computer manufacturers. In high-density memory solutions, Corsair has always been one of the first suppliers to achieve advanced qualifications on Intel, Tyan and SuperMicro server platforms. We also work closely with other major server platform manufacturers to release product that is 100% compatible with their latest server products.
What Sets Corsair Apart?
With more high-speed experience than anyone in the industry, we know the importance of design features like tightly-controlled trace lengths, controlled impedances, clock trace design, unbroken power and ground planes, and selectively plated gold. Corsair Memory has developed an industry-wide reputation for quality, compatibility and performance.
Performance Memory For Enthusiasts
Our flagship memory products are the DOMINATOR™ line of performance memory, which is designed for the unique demands of the serious enthusiast community. Featuring patent-pending Dual-path Heat Exchange (DHX) technology, the DOMINATOR family maximizes on performance, minimizes on heat, all the while running with heighten reliability and stability. The DOMINATOR line has set world performance records and won numerous awards. Corsair’s mainstream performance memory solutions are the XMS family. The XMS family includes XMS2 DHX, featuring innovative DHX technology now in the mainstream; XMS Xpert, the first modules with real-time display of parametric data; XMS Pro Series, gaming memory with real-time activity LEDs; and XMS2, high-performance DDR2 modules with black heat spreaders. The XMS Family also includes DDR1 solutions in XMS, available in either black or platinum heat spreaders.
Our Value Select memory brings our quality and compatibility standards to cost-effective products for today's most popular desktops and laptops. Value Select is available in DDR1 and DDR2.
We also offer a large range of ultra-reliable server memory for mission-critical servers and high-performance clusters.
Flash Memory, Liquid Cooling and Power Supplies
Corsair has expanded beyond memory modules to offer performance liquid cooling units and blocks under our Corsair Nautilus brand and power supplies under our HX Series brand.
In addition, we offer a line of specialty Flash memory. From our ultra-rugged Flash Survivor™ family to the multi-award winning durable Flash Voyager™ family, Corsair has quickly established itself as an industry leader for USB drives.
What’s inside the box
Now it’s time to take a look at the drive itself and what the drive came shipped with.
Our package was the retail version.
We can see that the Corsair Flash Survivor is supplied with a USB extension cable and dog tags included.
We can also see a single LED (Blue) right next to the thread which flashes when the drive is active. The flash drive itself is a little larger and weights a little more than average flash drives due to the casing. On the left you can see a small rubber ring that makes this drive water resistant up to 200 meters.
The aluminium casing is CNC milled and gives us a very robust and premium quality impression.
Specifications and features
Flash Survivor is an extremely durable, water resistant, drop-tested flash USB memory drive. By design it is perfect for transporting valuable data such as personal files, photos and applications without having to worry about damage or loss of data due to the elements.
Drive capacity
Windows XP reports the drive has a usable capacity of 30.6 GB
Here we have another report from Flash Memory Toolkit after writing data to the drive.
Included Software
There is no software actually included on the Corsair Flash Survivor drive itself. However, Corsair provides free encryption software Truecrypt on their website which you can download and use if you wish. We did not actually test the software on the Corsair Flash Survivor. Also the version offered from Corsair is outdated already and a current Truecrypt version should be used instead.
Test machine
For this review we will be using a computer with the following configuration:
Hardware:
- Motherboard: MSI K8T-Neo
- Processor: AMD Athlon64-3000+
- RAM: 1 GB Infineon DRAM
- GFX: ATI Radeon 9600XT (128 Megabytes, AGP interface)
- Sound: Onboard Realtek AC97 audio controller
- Hard disk: 1X 120GB Maxtor Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 (6Y120L0)
- PSU: BeQuiet P4-350
- Operating System: Windows XP Professional (32 bit) with SP3
Test applications
To test the performance of the Corsair Flash Survivor, we will be using the following test applications in this review.
- HD Tune Pro
- HD Tach
- H2benchw
- Flash Memory Toolkit
Now let’s head to the next page where we will test out reading performance...
Reading Benchmark
For these tests, we will use HD Tune Pro 3 and will conduct reading benchmarks. As a reference we also tested a Maxell Maxstix 1GB USB 2 flash drive, so we had some data to compare. We would like to point out that HD Tune Pro results may differ from one system to another and results could also be operating system dependent.
Maxell Maxstix Reference test
Maxell Maxstix reference test
Corsair Flash Survivor 32GB benchmark
Corsair Flash Survivor 32GB
We present the table below for comparison with other recently tested flash drives.
Looking at the test samples, the Corsair Flash Survivor 32GB offers an average read speed and the highest access time. However it also offers by far the highest capacity of all drives.
To round off the reading benchmarks, we also include a test from HD Tach.
HD Tach reports a slightly higher average read speed than HD Tune Pro.
Writing and advanced benchmarks
For these tests we used H2benchw. H2benchw communicates with the Corsair Flash Survivor at low level and should therefore, at least in theory be, operating system independent. This test suite is capable of testing many aspects of a drives performance, including simulated real world tests.
We used the –a option (all tests) which depending on the drives capacity and speed will take a few hours to complete.
We will present performance graphs where available. Other test results will be presented in the form of text and tables.
Zone writing test
In our graph above, we can see that the Corsair Flash Survivor had an average writing speed of approximately 21MB/sec (see table for exact measurement).
Zone reading test
In our graph above, we can see that the Corsair Flash Survivor had an average reading speed of approximately 23MB/sec (see table for exact measurement).
H2benchw reading and writing test results and comparison tables
Below we can see the full reading and writing test results from H2benchw, in the form of tables which display the results of our review drive and, comparison results from other USB flash drives.
Repetitive and sequential read/write tests
The Corsair Flash Survivor is a little slower than the Flash Voyager GT 16GB. However unlike the Voyager GT 16GB, Corsair does not advertise the Survivor 32GB as a high speed drive.
Sustained transfer rate (block size: 128 sectors)
Again the Corsair Flash Survivor shows slower reading speeds compared to the Voyager but the difference in writing speeds is only marginal.
Random read/write access times
The Survivor’s seek times are again higher than on the Voyager GT
Simulated application read/write tests
In our graph above, we can see how the Corsair Flash Survivor performed in our simulated application tests (see table for the combined index score).
We present the following table for comparison with other USB flash drives
In our application test, the Corsair Flash Survivor is again slower than the Flash Voyager GT.
Summary:
Read and write speeds seem to be OK on the Corsair Flash Survivor 32GB, but the drive is considerably slower than the Corsair Flash Voyager GT 16GB.
Let’s move on to the next page where we test file reading and writing performance...
File reading and writing performance tests
To test the file reading and writing performance of the Corsair Flash Survivor 32GB, we used the file benchmarking option in HD Tune Pro using various file sizes between 32KB to 512MB. The Corsair Flash Survivor 32GB was set to “optimised for quick removal” in device manager.
To understand what the file benchmarking graphs are showing, we present a short explanation.
The vertical axis of the graph shows the reading and writing speed of the device in Megabytes per second, with the blue colour showing reading performance and the orange colour showing writing performance.
The horizontal axis of the graph shows the file block size in Kbytes and, as we can see, various block sizes are used in the test.
A small block size is useful for making the most of the available storage space on the device (very small files take up less space). The downside of using a small block size is that performance suffers badly when larger files need to be stored or read from the device. Using a larger block size will use up more space on the device when very small files are being stored, however, using a larger block size will give much better performance when larger files have to be stored or read from the device.
Below are our obtained results.
32KB file size
1 MB file size
4MB file size
8 MB file size
64MB file size
512MB file size
Flash Memory Toolkit file benchmark
For our final file benchmark, we used Flash Memory Toolkit and ran the file benchmark.
Our result is shown below.
Summary
We can notice that as file size increases, the performance of the Corsair Flash Survivor flash drive also increases. This is exactly what we would expect from such a device. No problems to report and performance was in the range we could expect from previous benchmarks.
On the next page we will conduct some real world tests....
Real world copy tests
We will now conduct a few real world copy tests. These tests simulate what real people do with their drives. We will conduct both read and write tests, using one large single file and a multiple file copy of various file sizes.
We should point out that this is not a scientific way of measuring performance. These timings were taken with a stop watch and, we have also found after testing flash drives on many PC configurations and operating systems that these timings have more to do with differences in operating systems and setup than they do with the flash drive itself.
Because of the nature of these tests, we will not be comparing the results with other flash drives, as these results could be very inaccurate. They are presented only as a guide.
Multiple file copy writing test
For this test we copied the Nero Burning Rom install folder from our review PC’s C: drive to the Corsair Flash Survivor 32GB
Our test copy contained 1,915 files of various sizes with a combined capacity of 306MB.
Our result is below.
Single large file writing test
For this test we used a single CD ISO file which had been copied to the C: drive of our review PC. The file was then copied to the Corsair Flash Survivor 32GB.
Our test file was a 701MB ISO file
Our result is below.
Multiple file copy reading test
Before starting these tests, our review PC was rebooted to make sure the PC’s cache was cleared.
For this test, we copied the multiple files we had previously copied to the Corsair Flash Survivor 32GB back to the C: drive of our review PC.
Our result is below.
Single large file reading test
For this test, we copied the single CD ISO file we had previously copied to the Corsair Flash Survivor 32GB back to the C: drive of our review PC.
Our result is below.
Summary
Looking at the achieved results, the Corsair Flash Survivor offers an average writing speed. However it will take an estimated 38 minutes to completely fill up all the space on this drive and about 22 minutes to read the data back.
Durability tests
In these tests we decided to test the durability of the Corsair Flash Survivor 32GB.
These tests are simple and non scientific, they merely mimic some of the silly things that users tend to do with these types of devices sometimes or that may occur if the drive is used in a rough environment. This includes accidentally dropping the drive or transporting them in an environment that is rather unusual for PC devices. All these tests were done with the drive being enclosed in its casing.
Water Test
This drive is supposed to be water resistant up to 200 meters. Since we did not have deep-sea divers available to conduct this test, we simply put the drive under water instead.
While the casing certainly got wet by doing this test, the inside stayed perfectly dry so the drive should not have been damaged by this procedure.
Freezer Test
For this test, we put the Corsair Flash Survivor 32GB into a freezer with a temperature of about -18°C and kept it there for 10 hours.
After another 10 hours the Corsair Flash Survivor 32GB was connected to our PC again. We can confirm that the drive was still working perfectly.
Weight Test
For this test, we placed the Corsair Flash Survivor 32GB on a concrete ground again and then placed an 80kg weight on it. The Corsair Flash Survivor 32GB worked flawlessly after connecting it to the PC again.
Drop Test
For this test, we dropped the Corsair Flash Survivor 32GB from carry height to a concrete ground and repeated this 25 times. Although the casing of the Corsair Flash Survivor 32GB had some small scratches after executing this test, it still worked perfectly when it was connected to our review PC again.
Error Scan
We decided to check the Corsair Flash Survivor 32GB after conducting these durability tests with HD Tune Pro’s error checking test.
The result is shown below.
As we can see in the above screenshot, the Corsair Flash Survivor 32GB has survived both our review testing procedures and our durability tests with flying colours. There are no errors on the device at all.
This concludes our Corsair Flash Survivor 32GB review. Click the link below to read the conclusion...
Conclusion
Positive:
- Good reading and writing performance.
- Very large capacity.
- Extension USB cable and dog tags supplied.
- Extremely robust and durable.
- 10 year limited warranty.
Negative:
- Bigger and weights a little more than usual USB stick drives
Summary:
Let us summarize the most important positive and negative points below:
The main positive points:
The Corsair Flash Survivor 32GB provides a good reading and writing performance and is an ideal place for storing most of your everyday data supplementing your laptop harddisc.
The Corsair Flash Survivor 32GB is extremely durable and very well constructed and should provide the end user with a reliable means of carrying their precious data from once place to the other being an ideal companion for ruggedized laptops.
Corsair themselves are confident enough to provide a 10 year limited warranty with the Corsair Flash Survivor 32GB.
The main negative points:
The drive is a little bigger and also weights a little more than most other USB sticks. But this is a result of the extremely robust casing and probably does not matter in the environments this drive is intended for. People who do not need this durability can select the Corsair Flash Voyager series instead.
To sum up, this is what we would say:
“The drive is extremely robust and has a very large storage capacity. In addition it has a 10 year limited warranty”.
Because of the durability and storage capacity of the Corsair Flash Survivor 32GB flash drive; we decided to award the drive our CD Freaks “Safe Buy” award.
We found the Corsair Flash Survivor 32GB flash drive at Mix Computer priced at 88.90€.
You may comment on this review below or in this forum thread.
Thanks to:
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EFD Software for providing the fully licensed versions of HD Tune Pro and Flash Memory Toolkit |
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Simpli Software for HD Tach |
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c’t Magazin for providing H2benchw |
