Corsair Announces Immediate Availability of the New 16GB Flash Voyager USB Drives

Fremont, CA (December 12, 2006) – Users will no longer have to worry about having enough space on their personal flash drives to store all their files, music, photos, videos and applications. Today Corsair®, a worldwide leader in high performance computer products, expanded its lineup of the award-winning Flash VoyagerTM USB2.0 drives to include new 16GB capacities. Enclosed in the Corsair proprietary all-rubber Flash Voyager housing and boasting water-resistant properties, the new 16GB drive allows users to carry more valuable data and applications without compromise. Equipped with a security application and featuring the latest controller technology, the 16GB Flash Voyager delivers an outstanding combination of functionality and ultra-high capacity.

Designed for users who demand the highest capacity drive currently available on the market, the new 16GB Flash Voyager can store up to 8 full-length, high definition movies with ease. 16GB of storage capacity is equivalent of close to 4 DVDs or over 20 CDs – all in a small foot print USB design! The drive is also bootable, which means users can store a full version of Microsoft® WindowsTM operating system and configure the PC to boot from USB. Combined with the large capacity of the drive, it allows IT managers and technology users to troubleshoot from station to station with all the applications and files necessary to perform desktop support.

“As high definition content becomes more prevalent and that consumers demand portability of their favorite videos, pictures and applications, the need for an ultra high capacity drive increases. With a 16GB drive, you can put the entire series of three Lord of the Rings movies, an operating system, chat programs, photo editing software and still have storage space available for more,” said Richard Hashim, Director of Product Marketing at Corsair. “Consumers have learned to rely on Corsair Flash Voyage to safe guard their important content. The new Flash Voyager drive will protect the data even when the drive is exposed to the most extreme conditions.”

Built to Corsair’s legendary quality and reliability standards, the new 16GB USB drive delivers sustained read and write performance at 22MB/sec and 7MB/sec respectively. Taking full advantage of the new flash controller technology, the 16GB Flash Voyager features 8 bit Error Correcting Codes (ECC) – the highest code scheme for flash based controller currently available. ECC provides sophisticated capabilities to enhance product reliability, which allows the drive to continue to operate even after repeated use over time.

Favored by those who are on the go, the Flash Voyager drives bring additional features to make the perfect mobile companion. First in the industry to feature all-rubber housing, the USB Flash drive performs reliably even under the most extreme conditions. Whether it is exposed to severe temperature, moisture or physical abuse, the Flash Voyager performs consistently to hold the valuable data. To promote data security, each Flash Voyager is readied with a security application that allows users to create a hidden, password-protected partition on the USB drive. The password is encrypted with 256bit AES encryption, the most secure encryption algorithms available.

Backed with Corsair’s 10-year warranty and on-demand customer support, the new 16GB Flash Voyager is currently available through Corsair’s authorized distributors, resellers, retailers and e-tailers worldwide. The introduction MSRP of the 16GB Flash Voyager is $299 USD. Each drive is bundled with lanyard, security software/driver mini CD, and USB extension cable. For more information on the 16GB Flash Voyager as well as information on where to purchase it, please visit www.corsair.com. High resolution image of the product is available for download at http://www.corsair.com/corsair/media.html.

About Corsair
Corsair, a member of JEDEC, has been a leader in the design and manufacture of high speed modules since 1994. Corsair has earned the reputation as being the first to market with leading-edge products supporting new computing platforms and technologies. Corsair supplies memory for applications ranging from mission-critical servers to ultra-high performance gaming systems. The performance and reliability of Corsair memory products makes them ideal for memory intensive computing.

Corsair also manufactures high performance cooling solutions and power supplies for the enthusiast marketplace.

 

A fairly neat price I think, shame it probably won't go lower, £170~ give or take when you can get 1GB sticks for £10.

 

pretty nice as a boot drive if you mount it internally. the only reason people buy raptors is so they boot fast, you cant beat flash for that

 

Whats the transfer speed on a flash drive such as this ?

 

read ~35MB/s, write ~20MB/s tops

 

22MB/s read, 7MB/s write.

Pretty poor.

 

are they really that slow.. oh well i cant afford one anyway lol.. in that case i fail to see the point of such a device, why not just burn a dvd9

 

How does that make it faster than a raptor then ?

 

The problem is that this is a USB flash drive, and IDE based flash drive is a LOT faster then an IDE drive because the seek times are almost non existant.

 

i got confused .. i had read something about using compact flash in a mini itx system using a ide converter and assumed usb was the same.. forgetting it only works at usb 1.1 at boot up anyway lol

 

I've seen recommendations in a couple of places to turn caching off on a pen-drive Portable Firefox to get the most drive life;

Is this likely to be a factor with big HDD-replacement Flash drives?

 

I was under the impression that you could only access flash drives a few million times before they died? So, if this is true, maybe that's why turning off caching, history, etc... would be best for the drive because it would reduce accesses?

 

All drives will eventually succumb to read/write useage. Its like a light bulb, the more you turn it on and off the more likely it is to fail, however they can effectively last for decades if never turned off.

Keyboards have a life aswell, the membranes eventually crumble and rot.

 

Yeah, but no, but like in relative terms, Flash v Magnetic platters?

Don't seem too bad, my 1Gb pen-drive will be an antique in a couple of years.

On magnetic, I've just been given a Celery 333 system with everything working perfectly (if slowly) from 1998, even the original keyboard. Packard Bell really know how to build a PC.

 

My 512 is already there then and it's one of these. (a Flash Voyager) The 8 gig one supposedly has significantly better read/write times, even if the write is double it'd be better. I don't think I need 16 gigs, much less 8, but it would be nice, and it is half the price, so if I buy it the 8GB on will be my next.

I have the same situation! Our dell from 1999 with Win 98SE still gets the job done had it has a 10GB Western Digital and a PIII 760 Mhz. Explains why all the hard drives in this house are Western Digital.

 

Would an 8GB drive work when plugged into the USB 1.1 port of a WinME pc without having to install drivers and re-start the machine?

 

ME has built-in "general purpose" USB drivers same as 2k and XP, but I guess YMMV depending on the pen-drive.

Example:

My Kingston just doesn't mention ME.

 

I notice Crucial have a USB2 pen drive faster than that. (Gizmo! Overdrive range). 25Mb/s read, 13Mb/s write. Around double a normal USB2 drive price but twice as fast as mine.

 

If I was going to spending a lot of money on a USB pen drive though, I'd want it to be as virtually indestructable as the Flash Voyagers are.

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Usb Flash is far too slow, unless your moving only an album at a time for my purposes its too slow