Corsair 1TB Flash Voyager GTX 1TB USB 3.1 Premium Flash Drive (CMFVYGTX3C-1TB)

TLDR: If memory drive casing width is not an issue, get the Corsair Voyager GTX. Otherwise, if speed requirements aren't a high priority, the convenience of retractable USB jack may make the Sandisk Extreme Pro your preference. FACTORS: These days there are so many choices in USB flash memory drives, it can be daunting to decide. The two key aspects are memory size and speed. While most people look at the memory capacity, often speed is overlooked. And it's not just read speed, but write speed as well. If you load the flash memory drive with a lot of data and mostly use it to read that data, the write speed isn't as important. For faster than average write speed times, usually you do pay a premium. Dollar for dollar, the Corsair Voyager GTX memory drive is a phenomenal value, compared to the closest competitor--the Sandisk Extreme Pro. While the Sandisk also features a rugged aluminum casing, it has a capless retractable USB jack--a movable part that can break. Also, its read and write speeds are behind that of the Corsair. VALUE: For my purposes, I wanted to get a very sturdy & durable USB flash memory drive that will last me well until 256Gb becomes anemic compared to the cost of a 1Tb drive (as cost of 8Gb drives 5 years ago is about even with 128Gb today). Originally I was planning to get another 128Gb drive (I have a Sandisk model of that), but then I noticed the pricing for 256Gb had come down quite a bit. At the time of this writing the "peak value" seems to be 256Gb, as the $1/Gb change from doubling size becomes nearly flat going from 256Gb to 512Gb. Consider $50 for a 128Gb drive, then just $20 more for 256Gb, and it's clear that it makes more sense to invest in the larger drive. CASING: The Corsair Voyager GTX drive is an extremely solid device. The casing is a heavy cast aluminum alloy with steel reinforcement. I was amazed to find that the Sandisk Extreme Pro has identical weight, based on product specs, as the Sandisk is more narrow. And that is one drawback to the Corsair Voyager GTX -- it is wide. Wide enough that when plugged into a USB A socket, it will very likely overlay part of the neighboring USB socket. That could be a problem for some people. USB JACK: The retractable USB jack is a novel and convenient concept offered by Sandisk, but it does not guard against dust & debris intrusion. There is also the risk of the mechanical mechanism breaking, as it utilizes plastic parts. The Corsair Voyager GTX is completely solid state. There is the matter of the cap... and some people have complained about ease of loss. But frankly, the cap is made of the same aluminum shell and is noticeably heavy. This isn't something easily lost. If you drop it on a hard floor, you will most definitely hear the thud of impact. When cap docking, the dense foam insert makes for a nice solid friction fit. PERFORMANCE: I haven't done any speed measuring tests, but general observation is that the Corsair is impressively fast with both read & write, compared to my older Sandisk USB 3.0 128Gb drive. The Corsair incorporates a real SSD controller inside it, instead of standard USB flash memory protocol management. It does not get appreciably hot during use. PRICE: For a while, the cheapest price I could find for the Corsair Voyager GTX 256Gb was $71.99. But as of this writing, the price dropped to $5 less, while the Extreme Pro is still at $70.99. FINAL VERDICT: I'm very happy I got the Corsair Voyager GTX memory drive. It's impressively solid & I actually enjoy the heft of this device and the secure friction fit of the protective cap, guarding against moisture & debris.

Excellent construction. Fast speed with excellent blinking LED. Different to other drives, this one is recognized by the pc instantly! Recommend formatting it before use! Do recommend 100%.

I bought this disk on key after a SanDisk SDCZ880-256G-G46 Extreme PRO 256GB USB 3.1 Solid State Flash Drive died within a few months of light use. I looked for the disk on key with the largest storage, good performance, and pocketability, and got all three. It isn't as fast as an SSD, but it is at least 10x faster than similar products, e.g. Kingston Digital HyperX Savage, for both large and small files, and goes into my jean's small pocket. It is large and heavy for a disk on key, but I don't notice it in my small jeans pocket. Its just solid. Price per GB, the 1TB is about the same as the SanDisk (4x storage, 4x price), and it's smaller brothers. At the moment, it costs about twice as much as a 1TB Samsung T5 SSD, which is the price of size. Its a personal preference, and that's mine. ____________ Later addition, December 2024 ____________ I have two Corsair GTX flash drives for 4+ years. I use them as semi-backups, and had terabytes written to them. Both are working as usual, starting fast, then stabilize at 80MB/s. I love how reliable they are. ____________ Later addition ____________ There's a common complaint about flash drives being that the advertised drive size is larger than the size displayed by OS such as Windows. It is a bluff by all manufacturers, so I think its worth an explanation. Operating systems display drive size with GB = 1024^3 bytes. Manufacturers advertise drive size with GB = 1000^3 bytes. The smaller GB allows for a larger number next to it. For any flash drive by any manufacturers, if the flash drive size is advertised in GB, expect the drive size displayed by the operating system to be ~7% smaller than the advertised size.

As a self employed IT Engineer, I carry a ton of digital tools for my everyday use. Not only the usual tools most techs have, but tools specific to many companies I contract services to. Many of these files are huge, and transferred extremely slow with your standard thumb drive.... though this is technically a crossover to SSD, the only "thumb" part is the USB part. However, transferring this fast is such a relief. Hopefully the video uploads properly so you can see my full side by side speed comparison, then you will KNOW just how fast it is! Just to note, it is only this fast on USB 3.0. You wont get near this speed if plugged into a USB 2 or earlier. However, while around 600+ mbps transfer on 3.0, I generally get between 15-35 on 2.0 drives, a couple times close to 100. I sometimes have issues getting it to even work on 2.0 ports, yet switch to an exact same port next to it, and it works. Perhaps dirty ports, I don't know. Like others have said, it's solid. It's not going to break if you drop or step on it. I have broken other thumbs when it's sticking out the front of a pc and bumped it. This one... you will break the usb port on the computer before you break this flash drive. I did pull it out of one pc early on and the drive got write protected and unreadable, had to format & reload all files because none of the commands for repair did any good... but this happens with any flash drive from time to time. I do use Hasleo Bitlocker on it to password protect access to it. It's possible there was a conflict there which caused it. I haven't had any problems since that one time early on. As far as price, it's a bit high @ $50 for 128 gigs. You know this thing costs Corsair mere pennies a piece, but I can't really blame them for making the money before such devices become the norm and are everywhere. Again however, just be very aware that if you use an older computer that has USB 2.0 you intend to use this on, you wont get speeds like this out of it. Make sure you have 3.0 so you won't be disappointed. Of course, you could always add something like a USB 3.0 5Gbps PCI Express(PCIe) Expansion Card like this one https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B072LS4JH7/ which should at least get you 100mbps transfer on a pre-3.0 pc as long as it has PCI-E on it's board.

Worked great for my needs with Linux OS and the speed is honestly incredible when i tested on windows. No idea why the few reviews said it was slow maybe they reviewed the wrong product. Here is the results from testing the USB VS my normal laptop HDD.(also pic included) CrystalDiskMark results for the Corsair Voyager GTX 256 GB Seq Q32T1 Read 432.8 Write 429.5 4KiB Q8T8 Read 128.7 Write 160.9 4KiB Q32T1 Read 132.5 Write 156.5 4KiB Q1T1 Read 20.39 Write 40.01 -Decided to run the test on my laptops standard HDD to compare speeds CrystalDiskMark results for the internal 1TB HDD Seq Q32T1 Read 85.66 Write 99.35 4KiB Q8T8 Read 0.890 Write 1.104 4KiB Q32T1 Read 0.896 Write 1.178 4KiB Q1T1 Read 0.399 Write 1.090 Just amazed at the difference this is a quality USB drive to achieve that kind of performance on a normal USB 3.0 port and i think they really hit the mark with this drive. Pros: Fast SSD speeds, cheap(at least when i bought), works with Linux, looks nice, hard shell Cons. This almost lost a star for 2 reasons. (1) First and a reason that others have noted the paint and metal on the hard case surrounding the USB scratches very easy. Throwing it into a pocket with keys once already did it so i decided to scratch my name and Ubuntu into it which was very easy.(maybe improve the material its painted with) (2) Now on to my 2nd complaint is more a personal one based on my use and installation of the drive. There is little to no support for Linux from Corsair with these drives. I had to format, provision and optimize the drive all manually because they don't have a simple port of the SSD toolbox to Linux... (Please port it over) Still scratches and underwhelming Linux support from the program are no reason to lose a star. The drive itself preforms as expected and i would highly recommend it to anyone with high speed data transfer needs.

I bought at the same time the "Samsung FIT Plus USB 3.1 Flash Drive 128GB - 300MB/s (MUF-128AB/AM)" for $22 and installed an operating system (Linux PeppermentOS) to use as a independent banking PC/drive (effectively a isolated PC where the PC would boot from it with no interaction with my normal operating system HDD). I did the same to the Samsung FIT. Both were encrypted with the same encryption password. The Samsung did more or less ok, adequate enough for basic storage. The Corsair was approximately 5x's faster and noticeably snappier to use to run an operating system off of. Banking, email, and word processing, I couldn't tell any difference with my normal system. Even the mouse moved in a very responsive manner, unlike the Samsung. I did an 8.5GB transfer from the regular HDD to each to get a comparison. Using my phone's timer, the Samsung finished in about 1 minute 40 sec, showing transfer rates of 110-120 GB/s. The Corsair crushed it with taking approximately 20 seconds, showing rates of 460 to 500 GB/s. Not sure of the accuracy of the displayed xfer rates, but the Corsair took about 1/5th the time (which compares to about 5x's the xfer rate. But to be fair to the Samsung, when i transferred a 65MB folder with 242 pictures, everything was xferred faster than I was able to open the newly made folder and click on photos. So, in that aspect was great. It was just in opening of programs and general running an operating system, the Corsair had quicker response times, a perceivable amount. The whole feel was noticeably more responsive.. Enough to make paying the additional $36 a non-issue. Also the drive, with the extra heft of the metal casing, distributed the heat very well (especially during the lengthy operating install). It seems like that would contribute to a longer life, etc. A failure would outweigh any savings with trying to pinch some change. Other reviews mentioned the size and weight as an issue. For me, the drive just sits not too far from my desktop computers, and the size makes it easier to find. :) I would definitely buy it again, in a heartbeat for this application. Extremely happy.

This drive has a very high burst throughput, however the sustained throughput is much lower. In my testing, I was able to transfer at about 300MB/s for ~4GB, then it falls off to about 90MB/s after that. This was pretty consistent across my testing and points to some very high throughput internal buffers but some slower long term memory. I tested several times, allowing time for the internal buffer to partially (or completely) clear before the next test to ensure that was the case. When allowing for a partial clear of the buffer, the initial burst of speed would last for less than 4GB worth of data, further confirming an internal buffer. This is probably fine for most people, however I didn't test if the data was protected from failure if the drive was yanked before the buffer was allowed to clear. When installing Linux on the drive with an encrypted LVM, the random data write phase ran at about 2MB/s. I wasn't able to analyze this further, but it would seem to indicate the internal caching is effectively bypassed (which is good) by the explicit disk flushes done by the LVM initialization program.

Good drive but on heavy side. Perfect for vertical drive positions.