Here is Corsair’s tough Survivor GTR 32GB Flash Drive up for review.
Manufacturer: Corsair
Product: Corsair Survivor GTR 32gb
Street price: Around £90
Corsair are a major force in the memory marketplace. They also produce various air and watercooling components as well as a series of very highly reviewed power supplies.
Today we’re lucky enough to be taking a look at one of their latest memory products, the Survivor GTR tough flash drive.
Here’s a little about the company:
| Corsair has been a leader in the design and manufacture of high-speed modules since 1994. Our focus has always been on supporting the special demands of mission-critical servers and high-end workstations, as well as the performance demands of extreme gamers. While maintaining this core focus, in recent years, we’ve also brought our expertise, technology leadership and legendary quality and reliability to memory and other technology products for the more mainstream consumer. Corsair has expanded beyond memory modules to offer performance liquid cooling units and blocks under our Corsair Nautilus brand and power supplies under our HX Series brand. In addition, we offer a line of specialty Flash memory. From our ultra-rugged Flash Survivor™ family to the multi-award winning durable Flash Voyager™ family, Corsair has quickly established itself as an industry leader for USB drives. |
and the product…
| Flash Survivor™ is an extremely durable, water resistant, drop-tested flash USB memory drive. By design it is perfect for transporting valuable data such as personal files, photos and applications without having to worry about damage or loss of data due to the elements. |
Specifications
These are the specifications taken from the Corsair website:
– 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). – USB extension cable and Dog Tags included. – Protected by a Limited 10-year Warranty. |
As you can see it’s a pretty serious USB flash drive – let’s take a closer look.
Packaging and extras
The Survivor GTR comes in two capacities – 32GB and 64GB. We have been supplied with the smaller of the two which is still more than enough for most users I’d imagine.
It comes in a brightly coloured blister style packaging. Basic details are included showing the model and capacity of the Survivor GTR.
Packaging front.
The rear of the packaging gives more specific details on the rugged nature of the drive – it also has a handy graph (which I have included in the specification portion of the review) to show the data rate performance of the flash drive.
Packaging rear.
Once out of the packaging you can see it’s a tidy design.
The Corsair Survivor – more on the next page.
We can also have a closer look at the bundled accessories. The first of these is a USB extension cord.
USB cable.
The second was a Corsair branded dog tag and chain.
The Corsair dog tag.
No actual PC based use here but a fun little novelty item none the less!
A fun addition!
Survivor GTR up close
Moving onto the flash drive itself the Survivor GTR is an impressive and imposing item! Its CNC milled exterior is beautiful to behold and it’s certainly a robust item.
The Survivor GTR.
To open you simply unscrew the end marked with the arrows and lift the USB portion of the Survivor GTR out of the aluminium tube section. Here they are placed side by side.
Simply unscrew and you’re good to go.
Like the external profile of the outer protective casing the internal USB is also an all aluminium affair emblazoned with the same Survivor GTR branding. It’s a large unit so that additional USB extender will help if you need to plug the flash drive into more snug sockets such as those on the I/O plate at the rear of PC cases.
It’s a long USB drive.
The USB socket is the standard 4 pin design and is compatible with USB 2.0 and 1.0 standards. I also tried it in a USB 3.0 socket and it functioned fine although this will only run at USB 2.0 speeds.
Standard full size USB connector.
At the opposite end from the plug the drive has a deeply recessed LED activity light. This is covered by a deep perspex cover to protect it.
The activity LED.
Above this LED is the secret to the Survivor GTR’s 200m water resistance rating. Beneath the rubber collar is an EPDM waterproof seal. This fully seals the internal cavity once the USB portion of the Survivor GTR is totally screwed in.
The rubber washer.
Test Setup
| Motherboard: Asus M3N78 HDMI/Heatpipe RAM: 8GB OCZ Platinum PC8000 DDR2 SYSTEM HDD: 300GB Samsung F1 7200RPM SATA HDD ADDITIONAL HDD: 750GB WD 7200RPM SATA HDD Optical drive: Samsung DVD-RW SATA CPU cooler: Custom Watercooling PSU: Tagan Piperock 1100W |
Testing
Using the previous data I had available from my last batch of USB flash drive testing I could go ahead and bench the Survivor GTR to see how it compared.
I initially used Sisoft Sandra to bench using its testing suite. This should give a good indication of the overall performance of the flash drive.
I also performed my own test which comprised of transferring the same 580MB file from my last batch of testing. I transferred the data both to and from each USB pen to get both a read and a write time in seconds. In order to make the transfer as smooth as possible I transferred the files between the flash drives and the secondary HDD in my test system.
Since this wasn’t the system drive it will hopefully transfer in a constant and uninterrupted manner.
I repeated each flash drive test three times during both read and write testing and took the average.
I can also confirm that I tested the drive on Windows XP Professional, Windows Vista and Windows 7 with no issues at all.
Results
Initially I ran Sisoft Sandra’s benching suite.
I expected the Corsair Survivor GTR to match the impressive results the TwinMOS had returned in the previous USB flash drive review.
Sisoft Sandra.
What I ended up with was a massive increase in the ‘operations a minute’ score. It was way out ahead so I repeated the test another four times to confirm. This was the average and is seriously impressive.
Next up I tried some real world performance by transferring a 580MB file from the PC HDD to the Survivor GTR USB flash drive.
Write speed.
Write speeds up first and you can now see why the operations a minute score was so impressive… it’s almost three times as fast as the TwinMOS!
It’s more like a read speed result than a write speed. Again this was checked repeatedly and averaged out. An incredible result.
Finally I tested the read speed against the other drives by transferring the file back to the test system’s HDD.
Read speed.
Here the Survivor GTR beat the competition once again. More than 10% faster than the best competition – it’s a staggeringly fast drive!
Conclusion
The Corsair Survivor GTR 32GB is a robust, tough, well designed and excellent performing flash storage drive.
It\’s only real negatives are the sheer size of the drive and the price tag which is around £25 more than similar \’non-rugged\’ and £5-£10 more than \’rugged\’ competition.
The excellent Corsair Flash Survivor GTR.
That said, you are getting a particularly rugged item that comes with a 10 year warranty as well as the excellent Corsair brand name. It\’s also a staggeringly fast USB drive – imagine transferring 32GB of data to one of these. Judging by the testing stage it could conceivable take around 40% of the time to shift that amount of data to this drive. It\’s the difference between a 25 minute wait or an hours wait… your choice!
Pros
+ Large capacity
+ Incredibly fast read and write performance
+ Plug and play
+ Great looking
+ 10 year warranty
+ Tough design means it\’ll stand a fall
+ Waterproof design will be useful if it ever finds a puddle
Cons
– Price may be an issue for some but if you want rugged then it\’s not so much of a concern
To conclude the Corsair Survivor GTR 32GB is an impressive USB pen. Yes, if I were reviewing it from a simple storage standpoint I could only really give it our Silver award due to the price tag – however, I\’m assessing it on its rugged credentials so a little more comes into it.
In this respect it is competitively priced and performs exceptionally well – I therefore award the excellent Corsair Survivor GTR 32GB our Gold medal.
