Help me choose between 5 USB

[geokilla]

All right guys. Need some help here on choosing between 2 different USBs. One of them is a Corsair Flash Voyager 4GB and the other is a Patriot Xporter XT Boost 4GB 150x Flash Drive. I need the drive to be fast and reliable. I'm pretty sure it's faster than this which I got on Boxing Day.

Added two more, and they are a Kingston 8GB DataTraveler and Kingston 4GB DataTraveler. Are these two fast?

Doube EditL: Added the OCZ 4GB Rally2

Tips anyone?

[Alathald]

Depends, if you need a REALLY sturdy drive that is going to be dropped, kicked, stepped on and possibly run over AND you don't mind losing the cap in the first day or so, go for the Corsair.

Judging from the reviews on NewEgg, the Corsair seems to be faster as well...

[geokilla]

Sounds like you've given it A LOT of abuse. But it still works right?

As for the cap, maybe you dropped it somewhere....I really want my caps since it looks nicer with the cap.



Other comments are appreciated as well.

[Alathald]

Still works fine

If you really don't want to lose the cap, you could run a needle and thread through it to tie to the spot for the lanyard, the cap is just a bit of rubber...

[geokilla]

Wow.

BTW, updated first post with 2 more USBs.

[Alathald]

Wow, I love how they have it marked down from $84 for a 4Gb...the Kingston you have listed is not all that fast, if you want an idea of how fast the flash drives are, just look at the read/write speeds, the Kingston is 5Mbps/1.5Mbps while the Corsair is 19Mbps/13Mbps. Although, that is only according to those particular sites, you may want to check the manufacturers page for specs and also read a couple reviews to be sure the drives actually live up to manufacturer specs.

I still gotta go with the Corsair, while there are faster drives out there (Corsair even has faster drives) they are not as good a price point IMO.

[geokilla]

I need it fast so I can run Firefox Portable smoothly. And the Kingston might be suitable for me, but I'll search around some more first.

[Alathald]

I run quite a few apps from this site on my Corsair (including Firefox) and I've never noticed any lag whatsoever if that's what you're worried about...the Corsair is about 4x the speed of the Kingston as well so...

[martini161]

i ran firefox portable on an ancient 128mb kingston data traveler and it runs fine.

[geokilla]

I added the OCZ Rally2 USB into the first post.

Ya, I get applications from portable apps.

[stev]

geokilla,

If you remembered the Corsair Voyager 4Gb giveaway last year, I had won that contest.

The Corsair drives are fast!

Anyways, the thread is found here ... http://forums.legitreviews.com/about11769-80.html

When the drive came in, I had done a mini review with data transfer speed tests.

Here's the results again:

The first quick read/write data tests are in for USB 2.0 on Win-XP SP2

Test done with Calibrate Test DiskGraf Version 1.3A
Program by Roy Longbottom

Write and Read two 4 MB files, 64 KB Block Size

Lexar Impact 128mb (USB 1.0, 1.1 & 2.0 compatible)
Write = 0.54mb/sec
Read = 0.87mb/sec

Lexar Sport 128mb (USB 1.1 & 2.0 compatible)
Write = 1.68mb/sec
Read = 12.16mb/sec

Scandisk Cruzer 1Gb (USB 1.1 & 2.0 compatible)
Write = 3.78mb/sec
Read = 18.10mb/sec

Corsair Survivor 4Gb (USB 1.1 & 2.0 compatible)
Write = 3.83mb/sec
Read = 29.00mb/sec

The more 4Mb files tested in the loop, the better the Corsair Suvivor shines during the write data rate.

The Corsair Survivor wins the head-of-the-pack in the test sampling. Knowing that the GT version is better, Corsair still leads-the-pack!

[geokilla]

I picked up the Corsair Flash Voyager 4GB today for $19.99 + tax at Canada Computers. Thanks for everyone's help.

[Alathald]

Let us know how you like it, I've currently got Knoppix installed on my 2Gb Corsair...I've been finding interesting new ways to screw up my computer between the abuse of excessive power in Ubuntu and messing around with Vista so it's nice to have Knoppix on USB to fix stuff...where was I going with this? oh yeah, it's a very snappy USB, no real lag in Knoppix or any of the other programs I've ran on it.

Hope you like it!

[geokilla]

Woops. I forgot to update the thread.

Anyways, I love this USB. So fast and sturdy. The case is absolutely fantastic. However, I hate the design of the USB cap. I have to put it into my bag every time I use my USB at school so I won't lose it.

FireFox Portable runs with little to no lag, which is a good thing. However, lately I noticed that Firefox portable would lag a lot. Sometimes the lag's worse than my old Patriot Signature 2GB USB. I didn't change any of the config or about:config settings. At first, I thought it was the computer that I was using, but then for a few days using it on different computers, it's lagging a lot.

I'll give formatting a try once I backup all of my files.