Hot Deal: 4GB Corsair USB Flash Drive for $99 AR

[Stereodude]

Though some of you might be interested in this one. It's the lowest I've seen a 4GB flash drive to date.

4GB Corsair USB Flash Drive for $99 After Rebate ($119-$20) from the following 3 vendors.

ZipZoomFly

Newegg

MonarchComputer

 

[mubs]

It is an awesome deal, but I read that writes are slow at 9MB/s, unlike reads, which are double that speed. It seems most higher cap flash drives have this problem. I recently recommended that my brother buy 2 x Sandisk 2GB (they were on sale), and was crestfallen at how slow writes were.

For about 70% more $, you can have a Cypress chipset-based 2.5" USB2 bus-powered enclosure and a Samsung 100GB drive. That's what I did.

 

[Stereodude]

For about 70% more $, you can have a Cypress chipset-based 2.5" USB2 bus-powered enclosure and a Samsung 100GB drive. That's what I did.

But, you can't fit that in your pocket unless you're a skateboarder. :wink:

Personally, I'm trying to hold out for a 2GB Lexar Lightning, which is one of the fastest USB flash drives when writing and reading files of all sizes. Review at Anandtech http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=2549

 

[timwhit]

I could care less about speed on a USB flash drive. All I care about is its ability to not break with my data on there.

 

[CougTek]

The write speed depends on the size of the data chunks you're writing. The Corsair Flash Voyager doesn't cap at 9MB/s, but at 12-13MB/s. The read speed can reach 17-18MB/s. See this review and this other one.

With its rubber outfit, the Flash Voyager is one of my favorite USB drive. It is even waterproof to a certain limit, something that few other drives can claim. The only downer is that the cap is easy to lose.

 

[mubs]

But, you can't fit that in your pocket unless you're a skateboarder. :wink:

Personally, I'm trying to hold out for a 2GB Lexar Lightning, which is one of the fastest USB flash drives when writing and reading files of all sizes.

Yes you can. I was surprised at how small the 2.5" enclosure is; barely bigger than the drive itself.

The 2GB Lexar Lightning was available for a very good proce somewhere very recently; found it, Dell Home, $96.

 

[Stereodude]

The write speed depends on the size of the data chunks you're writing. The Corsair Flash Voyager doesn't cap at 9MB/s, but at 12-13MB/s. The read speed can reach 17-18MB/s. See this review and this other one.

Sorry, but you're incorrect.

The 1GB version tested by Anand, and ArsTechnica tested a 512MB version. If you look at Corsair's site you'd see that the 256, 512, and 1gig versions are capable of

- Supports sustained read speed up to 19MB/sec
- Supports sustained write speed up to 13MB/sec

But, that the CMFUSB2.0-2GB and CMFUSB2.0-4GB support 19MB/s read, 9MB/s write.

 

[Stereodude]

The 2GB Lexar Lightning was available for a very good proce somewhere very recently; found it, Dell Home, $96.

Yeah, I saw that, but I think it will continue to get cheaper in the next few days.

 

[Buck]

WD has had their Passport Pocket drive out for a short time now. It's a USB interface with a 6 GB 1" drive inside (WDXMM60WPN). My disti carries them, but they don't seem to be moving. Something like $139.00 each. Six gigabytes for $139.00? Hoolie Doolie!

 

[mubs]

Buck, second violation in as many days! Merc's going to get you.

 

[Stereodude]

WD has had their Passport Pocket drive out for a short time now. It's a USB interface with a 6 GB 1" drive inside (WDXMM60WPN). My disti carries them, but they don't seem to be moving. Something like $139.00 each. Six gigabytes for $139.00? Hoolie Doolie!

The 8 gig Seagate microdrive CF cards are only $149. No wonder they aren't moving.

 

[Buck]

Mubs, it's not like I mentioned S*ny in the same sentence.

 

[ddrueding]

The 8 gig Seagate microdrive CF cards are only $149. No wonder they aren't moving.

Spiffy! Where?

 

[Stereodude]

Spiffy! Where?

Amazon.com

 

[LunarMist]

The 8 gig Seagate microdrive CF cards are only $149. No wonder they aren't moving.

Maybe people are waiting for these? 450-500 frames on one fast CF card. :mrgrn:

 

[Stereodude]

[Maybe people are waiting for these? 450-500 frames on one fast CF card. :mrgrn:

Maybe, but depending on the camera, a lot of the time the faster cards don't make any difference.

 

[mubs]

Mubs, it's not like I mentioned S*ny in the same sentence.

You keep mentioning W*D (previously in another thread a day ago). I'm concerned for you, Buck.

 

[jtr1962]

Maybe people are waiting for these? 450-500 frames on one fast CF card. :mrgrn:

I get 300+ frames of 1600x1200 on the 128 MB card in my mom's digicam. With 8 GB that would be more like ~20000 frames ( or maybe 10,000 plus with today's 5 or so megapixel digicams).

500 frames on 8 GB is a whopping 16 MB per frame. I think that NASA earth picture I downloaded once was smaller than 16 MB, and it was something like 10000x10000 (over 100 megapixels). What on earth are you using that you require 16 MB per frame? Based on the ~300KB picture size my mom's camera has with 2.1 megapixels, I'm figuring 16 MB per frame means you're using a 120 or so megapixel camera. I didn't know those even exist yet.

 

[ddrueding]

The Cheapo P&S I'm using now is 7.2MP (3072x2304), and that gives me about 220 frames on a 1GB card. The camera I'm drooling over is 16.7MP (4992 x 3328)

I can see a need for an 8GB card

 

[LunarMist]

Joe,

Yes, the filesize for the 16.6 megapixel 1Ds Mk II is about 16MB. Although it has only 12.4 megapixels, the filesize of the D2X is slightly larger because Nikon embeds a full-sized medium quality jpg (compared to only 1024x1536 for Canon). A 16 megapixel TIFF image would require 48MB for 8 bits or 96MB for 16 bits. However, the RAW files are compressed (usually losslessly), so 16MB for a 12-bit file is actually quite good.

 

[jtr1962]

I can see a need for an 8GB card

I can, too. I was just wondering what LM uses that he requires 16 MB per frame. Even your 16.7 megapixel camera should be able to get a frame in about 5 MB. BTW, I read somewhere that 8 megapixels is about equal to 35 mm film. Interesting that even commodity digicams are approaching that.

 

[jtr1962]

Joe,

Yes, the filesize for the 16.6 megapixel 1Ds Mk II is about 16MB. Although it has only 12.4 megapixels, the filesize of the D2X is slightly larger because Nikon embeds a full-sized medium quality jpg (compared to only 1024x1536 for Canon). A 16 megapixel TIFF image would require 48MB for 8 bits or 96MB for 16 bits. However, the RAW files are compressed (usually losslessly), so 16MB for a 12-bit file is actually quite good.

Thanks for clearing that up. With lossless compression that is quite good for a 12 megapixel file. I think my mom's digicam can save in uncompressed TIFFs, but I honestly didn't see much difference compared to the jpegs and the file size was ~20 times larger.

 

[LunarMist]

The Cheapo P&S I'm using now is 7.2MP (3072x2304), and that gives me about 220 frames on a 1GB card. The camera I'm drooling over is 16.7MP (4992 x 3328)

I can see a need for an 8GB card

I will continue to use 4GB cards in the 1Ds MK II for the most part, though 8GB cards will be nice when the higher-resolution replacement body appears (probably later this year). The 8GB cards could be useful in hazardous environments or UW housings, etc., but the main issue is the number of images one is willing to risk when a card fails. ~240 images is a lesser risk than ~480. Considering that the 1Ds MK II is a moderately slow body, it is not usually used for action or other high throughput purposes. The key is to have plenty of CF cards on hand and exchange them well before they are full. I would also use a 4GB card in the 1D MKII or 1D MK IIN since one is likely to go through ~480 frames more quickly.

 

[Buck]

WD has had their Passport Pocket drive out for a short time now. It's a USB interface with a 6 GB 1" drive inside (WDXMM60WPN). My disti carries them, but they don't seem to be moving. Something like $139.00 each. Six gigabytes for $139.00? Hoolie Doolie!

I bought one of these miniature wonders to test out. It is actually more useful then I expected. I needed to transfer a large DVD ISO file and this drive was perfect. I also transfered some other files to an older system, and the 440BX board in there had no problems detecting this USB device. Compatibility seems pretty good. The only downside is the FAT32 file system. With its 4 GB file size limitation, I would need to reformat the drive to NTFS for really large files. But this would make it difficult for non-Windows platforms to deal with. Oh well, I'll worry about that when it happens.

 

[Stereodude]

Though some of you might be interested in this one. It's the lowest I've seen a 4GB flash drive to date.

4GB Corsair USB Flash Drive for $99 After Rebate ($119-$20) from the following 3 vendors.

ZipZoomFly

Newegg

MonarchComputer

What a difference ~22 months makes. $27.99 with free shipping.

Sorry for dragging up another old thread

 

[ddrueding]

Nice. But I still stick to the "GT" version. Seems they only have the 8GB model, and it is a pricey sucker.

 

[Stereodude]

Nice. But I still stick to the "GT" version. Seems they only have the 8GB model, and it is a pricey sucker.

Bah, not worth the coin. ~$10 per gig is all I'm willing to pay. I got a super fast Buffalo 4GB stick for $43.99. It's also unclear if the "GT" Voyagers are actually fast with small files. From the reviews I read they don't seem to be.

I did order 2 Corsair sticks today. The 2GB Voyager and the 4GB Survivor.

 

[ddrueding]

I typically carry 2GB files around. The smallest are multi-MB RAW files and the largest are system images. They are the quickest I've tried for this stuff.

 

[Mercutio]

The Transcend 8GB model I like was on sale last week at Newegg for $32. I have two already but I bought one for each of my coworkers.

 

[Stereodude]

The Transcend 8GB model I like was on sale last week at Newegg for $32. I have two already but I bought one for each of my coworkers.

Which model is that?

 

[Mercutio]

JFV10.

They're slow for copying little files, but do very well with larger ones.

 

[Stereodude]

JFV10.

They're slow for copying little files, but do very well with larger ones.

Oh... They're rated 10Mbyte/sec read and 3Mbyte/sec write.

 

[Will Rickards]

Regarding the GT model, it disappeared from corsair's website so I asked about it a couple days ago and got the following reply.

Thank you for contacting Corsair. This product line is not
discontinued. We discontinued our 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB Flash Voyager GT
and 8GB Flash Survivor GT, that is why they are removed from the product
pages. When we release another GT product, the page will contain all
the relevant GT information.

 

[Stereodude]

Regarding the GT model, it disappeared from corsair's website so I asked about it a couple days ago and got the following reply.

Talk about double speak. "We haven't discontinued the product line. We did however discontinue all the products in the product line." Whiskey Tango Foxtrox?

On a side note, I did notice they were missing yesterday when I went looking for them.

 

[ddrueding]

Charlie Foxtrot.

 

[Fushigi]

Perhaps they have a new generation in the pipe & had to stop production of the old models to provide production capacity for the new. As their 'deluxe' line they may drop the 2GB altogether & go 4/8/16GB.

Right now I'm satisfied with my A-Data 16GB unit that I picked up at Fry's for $90 on Black Friday. Nothing really to write home about but it works fine. In theory it does 10-19MB/s read, 7-14MBps write but I haven't tested it. I sold the 4GB JumpDrive Firefly it replaced to a coworker.

 

[Stereodude]

I got the 4GB Buffalo drive today, and I got the 2 Corsair drives yesterday.

The Buffalo is scary fast for writing. I did a few tests using a data set of 90.1MB that's 15 folders and 223 files. I copied it to the Buffalo drive in 17 seconds. It took 89 seconds to write the same data set to the 2GB Corsair Flash Voyager. Reading the same data set from the Buffalo took 7 seconds and the 2GB Corsair FV also took 7 seconds to read it.

A data set of large files 1.07GB and 31 files too 62 seconds to write to the Buffalo and 168 seconds to write to the 2GB Corsair FV. Reading it took 52 seconds with the Buffalo and 57 seconds with the Corsair FV.

 

[ddrueding]

Wow that is fast. Are you sure there was no buffering involved?

 

[Stereodude]

Wow that is fast. Are you sure there was no buffering involved?

Yes, I swapped drives before reading back which should kill any buffering.

IE: Copy files to Flash Drive A, eject it. Copy files to Flash Drive B, eject it. Read files from Flash Drive A, eject it. Read files from Flash Drive B, eject it.

I will probably do a little more testing on another computer just for a sanity check though.

 

[ddrueding]

Yep. I believe you, but those numbers seem almost impossibly fast, particularly for small files.