5. Languid Beauty & Blazing Beast USB Flash Drives

by Ed Tittel

The Memorex 12 GB Mega TravelDrive is built around an ultra-tiny 1.2" hard disk and offers a large amount of USB-accessible storage in a compact form factor - all the Mega TravelDrives in this series are the same size, including 4, 6 and 8 GB models. The Corsair 8 GB Flash Survivor GT drive is packaged in a heavy-duty milled aluminum tube, protected by watertight gaskets rated at up to 200 feet water depth. It's clearly packaged to handle severe abuse, though it does make for a sizable lump in one's pocket. Where the Memorex is attractive and fairly compact, however, it's also slow; and where the Flash Survivor GT is rough and tough, it's also blazingly fast.

The Memorex Mega TravelDrive comes packaged a sleek plastic shell, in silver or grey.

The Corsair Survivor package looks like a WWII-vintage Army match carrier, but lacks the compass on top.

While the Memorex 12 GB Mega TravelDrive offers more storage for less money than a Flash drive - it costs about $150 for 12 GB as opposed to about $130 for the Corsair Survivor's 8 GB - it's also considerably slower than you might expect. Data rates are about 4.5 times slower at writing and 3 times slower at reading data than a portable USB 2.5" drive like the Western Digital Passport (which costs $90 for a 60 GB model). A good Flash USB drive like the Corsair Survivor is at least as fast as a 2.5" external USB drive, if not somewhat faster. We copied the entire 2.49 GB Windows Vista ISO image to the Survivor in 193 seconds, for a data rate of about 13.23 MBps; it took 18 minutes 9 seconds, or 1089 seconds, to do likewise with the Mega TravelDrive, for a data rate of about 2.35 MBps.

What does this say for grads and dads who need USB storage? The Mega TravelDrive is best suited for those who need a moderate amount of storage and who aren't likely to be concerned about reading or writing speeds; indeed, it makes a nice travel accessory. The Corsair Survivor is well-suited for field operations of all kinds, including military ones, and offers blazing fast read/write speed as well.