Corsair Flash Survivor 32 GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive CMFUSBSRVR-32GB

Purchased this for use with a MacBook Pro. As formatted from the factory, it was fast for reading any kind of files, and for writing large (multi-megabyte) files, but painfully slow for writing many small files. Benchmarking tools (and most online reviews) don't appear to pick up this random small file problem.

Since I don't need to use it in a Windows environment, I reformatted the device as a Mac OS Journaled GUID partition, and the write speeds improved somewhat. I then created a 31 GB "sparse bundle" image on it, which is a OS X "Leopard" technology that makes a growable disk image of many 8 MB chunks. This seemed to accelerate writes significantly, but still nowhere near the maker's claimed write performance.

For Mac users who have no plans to plug it into a PC, I recommend reformatting it. As a bonus, if you create a sparse bundle disk image, you can set that disk image to be AES-128 or AES-256 encrypted, giving you peace of mind in case you lose...Read more

I've been a big fan of Corsair as I have their dominator memory in my rendering rig... but this Survivor 32gig is the biggest piece of garbage I've set my hands on.

The first one I had was so dreadfully slow it was taking around 6 hours to copy 18 gigs and then crashed. It had all the symptoms that everyone else has been complaining about online... do your homework. So I RMA'd it to Corsair and it took another week and a half to get another which appears to be even slower.

I've had it. I'm returning it to for a refund. It completely infuriates me that companies will produce such garbage with no consideration for people's time. I expect a product to work, and don't have 6 hours to waste testing their product... they should have invested in a little Quality Assurance on this one.

I bought this out of self defense after I sent my third USB flash drive through the washer and dryer. My only wish for this is a short cable to connect the cover to the unit to make it harder to lose the case. Without the case this is just another USB drive made out of aluminum. Durable but no longer waterproof.

Otherwise great drive and survives just about anything I can throw at it, including being run over by an electric cart (accident) when setting up at a trade show.