Corsair Flash Voyager 256MB

Examination:

Having already reviewed the Corsair Flash Voyager 512MB, Flash Voyager 4GB, and the Flash Voyager 8GB, this is now our fourth time reviewing a model from the Flash Voyager series. Due to this, in this review we will largely be looking at the performance of the 256MB version as well as its value.

Like the other Flash Voyager models, the 256MB version is water resistant thanks to its durable rubber construction. We have tested this claim in our past Flash Voyager reviews and we have never been let down by Corsair's quality of construction. With the original Flash Voyager 512MB drive after extended use we had noted that the rubber lettering began to wear off, but we can report that this issue hasn't occurred with either the 4GB or 8GB models that we have tested.

Performance:

All of the Corsair flash-based products we have ever tested have worked without any problems under GNU/Linux and the Flash Voyager series is no different. The Flash Voyager should work with any Linux distributions using the Linux 2.4 kernel or newer. For offering some quantitative figures to compare the 256MB drive, we had once again used hdparm with the -t argument for timed buffered disk reads. The average speed for the Corsair Flash Voyager 8GB was 32.28 MB/sec while the Flash Voyager 256MB was 19.23 MB/sec. The average read speed for the Seagate 5.0GB Pocket Hard Drive was 5.19 MB/sec. All read testing was done with Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn and a Tyan Toledo i965R motherboard with an Intel Pentium D 820 processor and a Seagate 7200RPM 80GB Serial ATA 2.0 hard drive.

Conclusion:

With the Flash Voyager 8GB having been around now for a while and Corsair having recently introduced the 16GB Flash Voyager, the small-capacity Flash Voyager models likely have a limited number of days left in the market. However, with the Flash Voyager 256MB selling for about $5 USD online, this is really an incredible deal. There are a variety of applications where a small capacity flash drive may be ideal from a SLAX or Damn Small Linux Live USB drive to simply taking a few files to and from your office. However, if you are in need of something larger the Flash Voyager 1GB can be found for about $10 USD and the Flash Voyager 8GB is an ideal candidate for large capacity needs. Shortly at Phoronix we will also be reviewing the Corsair Flash Voyager GT series.