USB flash drives are a wonderful invention, they are extremely small and lightweight, reliable, fast and they require very little power. The icing on the cake is if you have a USB capable computer (and who doesn’t in 2007?) you can use them for portable storage. It is not all positive however, flash drives have tiny plastic bodies, which tend to make them very weak and they are easily lost. Enter Corsair, who have taken a very different approach to his storage medium recently, they have designed a drive which is extremely durable to physical damage – in fact Corsair claim it is almost indestructible. In making this drive so they have made the drive somewhat larger, which in theory should mean it will also be harder to lose.

Features:

• Encased in extremely strong CNC-milled, anodized aircraft-grade aluminum.
• Water resistant to 200M through the use of a EPDM waterproof seal.
• Protected from vibration or impact damage through the use of a molded shock dampening collar.
• Plug-&-Play with any USB 2.0 certified peripheral computer port (backward compatible with USB 1.1).
• Includes the True Crypt security application (Windows Vista/XP/2000 compatible only) allowing for a virtual encrypted drive using AES-256 encryption
• USB extension cable and Dog Tags included
• Protected by a Limited 10-year Warranty.

Packaging and Bundle

The Corsair Survivor GT comes packed in a securely sealed plastic package. This kind of packaging is more than enough to protect a common USB flash drive, but we soon found out that the Survivor needs no protection at all! Some of the drive’s features are noted on the package, mostly focusing around the durability of the drive, rather than the fast transfer speeds instead. Bundled with the drive you will find a USB extension cable, necessary if your USB ports are close together or hard to access, and a rather strange but innovative lanyard in the form of an army ‘dog tag’ chain with Corsair’s logo on it. There is a data encryption software called TrueCrypt included inside the drive itself. TrueCrypt is a rather simple, effective and open source data encryption application.

The Corsair Survivor GT chassis is considerably big for a typically modern flash drive. While most drives are about the size of an AA battery, the Survivor appears gigantic next to one. However, what you see is not the drive itself but an aluminum shell protecting it. The drive itself it enclosed in an aluminum shell and you have to unscrew the drive in order to remove it. The chassis of the survivor is not very thick, but it is made out of a solid aluminum piece, which combined with the small size and round shape makes it extremely durable. At first glance one can also easily discern the two rubber shock dampening collars and the rubber sealing o-ring which makes the drive waterproof down to 200m depth. It can also resist high temperatures (i.e. fire) for quite a while, but not for prolonged periods of time as the synthetic interior of the Survivor will most likely melt.

Ironically, despite the space that the Survivor takes when enclosed in its protective shell, it is much like a very small flash drive with a metallic head when taken out. It will only cover one USB port and not block the ones next to it, no matter how close they are, which is an added bonus. Problems might arise only when the adjacent USB ports are populated with large devices or long receivers, which are likely to be obstructed by the metallic round head of the drive. In this case, the use of the provided USB extension cable is necessary. There is a single blue LED light on the Survivor which will flash as the drive is accessed.

Performance

4MB	8MB

16MB

Atto is a simple but effective file system benchmark. We initiated the test for three data lengths, 4MB, 8MB and 16MB. The larger data lengths are good for testing the maximum data transfer capability of the drive, while shorter lengths provide better real-world results. We can see that the maximum read rate of the Survivor GT is almost 24MB/s and the write speed is shy of 20MB/s. These are great results for a high speed flash drive, although the Survivor cannot reach the speeds of the Voyager GT, the fastest flash drive Corsair offers today. Still, all in all an impressive set of results.

A well known all-around synthetic benchmark is Sandra. We ran two Sandra tests, the Removable storage test and the File System benchmark. The results we got only verify the results taken by Atto. The average read speed of the Survivor is 23MB/s and the sequential write speed is slightly lower, at 21MB/s. Although the seek time of the Survivor is still below 1ms, the delete performance is almost 15% slower than that of the Voyager GT.

Real world read/write test, 700MB file
	Read	Write
700MB file copy	31,65 sec	36,24 sec
MB per second	22,11MB	19,32MB

In order to make our testing more complete, we timed the transfer of a 700MB file to the Survivor GT and then the transfer of the same 700MB file back to our HDD. Strangely, the Survivor GT performed very close to the results we got from the synthetic benchmarks, with the data transfer results being a mere 1MB/s slower. This is indeed strange as most of the drives we tested before (including the Voyager GT) lose many MB/s of performance during the real world tests. It seems that the Survivor GT fares better when it comes to continuous large file transfers than small chunks of data.

Final words and conclusion
The Corsair Survivor GT is a very unique kind of flash drive. In terms of outright performance, it is a very good, fast flash drive, easily able to compare with the fastest available at this point of time. But the high speed is not the primary feature of this flash drive, durability is. While the rubberized body of the Voyager GT made it shock proof, the Survivor GT is virtually indestructible. The aluminum shell of the Survivor makes it entirely shockproof, extremely durable and waterproof down to 200m. It also offers limited protection from fire. The Survivor appears able to withstand any kind of shock or impact.

We remember saying that the Voyager GT was perhaps overkill for casual use; however if you look at the Survivor GT this is surely the new definition of overkill for any casual user! It is considerably more expensive than the Voyager GT, larger, slower and while it is virtually indestructible we can hardly picture it around the neck of an army commando charging the enemy lines! Nevertheless, if you are used to placing your flash drive on places where physical abuse is very likely to happen (e.g. where pets or children usually play) or if you are taking it with you at your outdoor activities, the Survivor GT will never let you down.

We believe that the Corsair Survivor GT 8GB drive is worthy of our DriverHeaven Shortlist Award.

What do these awards mean?

The Survivor GT 8GB drive can be found in Komplett.co.uk for 97£.