Reviews - Corsair Flash Voyager GS (256GB)

[HEXUS]

USB flash drives have come a long way.

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[VijaySathyan]

I guess we are not far away from 512 gb & 1 TB versions...

[cheesyboy]

256GB! My first USB stick was a 128mb one which cost me ~£32 in around 2003, if memory serves.

Lasted me, in infrequent use, until around 2010 when it was handed to my sister-in-law with some pics of her wedding, never to return

[DemonHighwayman]

I wonder if it'd work better than a harddrive as a bootdrive, the numbers sound better than a mechanical drive anyway.

[Irien]

With sizes like that, and such levels of performance, the line between these and SSDs begins to blur (physical connections aside). Makes you start to wonder about what controllers are in there, and how closely such drives mirror their SATA counterparts... Given that the 256gb version costs more than a 256gb SSD, one wonders whether similar wear-level and garbage collection routines should be in place, and so on...

Indeed, such a USB drive should really be suitable for use as a portable OS drive, with a suitably plug'n'play OS... ( well, I can do it with an ARM board )

[Odeas]

At these kind of sizes I'd rather have an SSD in a good quality enclosure.

You'd get better performance and better reliability and feature set.
It would obviously use more room up but I'd hardly keep a £190 flash drive on my keychain.

[Saracen]

At these kind of sizes I'd rather have an SSD in a good quality enclosure.

You'd get better performance and better reliability and feature set.
It would obviously use more room up but I'd hardly keep a £190 flash drive on my keychain.

Me too.

Regular readers will know my views on SSDs are .... mixed .... but I'm struggling to see where this would appeal to me more than a 256GB SSD. The only advantages I can see to this are portability, and I can't think, personally where I need 256GB in a memory stick.

Competitor 1 - a 500GB or 1TB portable HD. They're a lot bigger, though hardly huge, and a LOT cheaper, so the portability factor has to hugely outweigh price, or the HD has to be too slow. On those occasions where I need 256GB, speed (versus USB 3 HDs) is not normally much of an issue.

Competitor 2. SSD. Either, this needs an external enclosure, or it needs an internal removable drive bay that takes 2.5" drives (SSD) or a 3.5" removable drive bay, and a 2.5" to 3.5" converter.

So, this device has to be about the convenience and portability of a memory stick, and personally, I can't see the need for me. I'd rather use competitor 2. I use memory sticks for quick and dirty data transfers, from time to time, but very rarely does 32GB not suffice, and if I do need more on rare occasions, I have several 32GB sticks .... at under £20 each.

[pvee]

too pricey and I'd rather have an external hdd with bigger capacity or an internal ssd or hdd.

[thedearleader]

Nice memory stick, wait until it gets mislaid or lost or eaten by the dog!

[PeteBest]

Looks pretty sweet, but after having a Voyager GT 3.0 fail on me recently (a very common thing it would seem) I don't trust Corsair's memory sticks anymore