Corsair Voyager GS 128GB USB 3 flash drive

1. Introduction2. Corsair Voyager GS 128GB Flash Drive3. Real World Performance Testing4. Synthetic Performance Testing5. Closing Thoughts6. View All Pages

USB flash drives are a useful device to have at home or work, we use them all the time in the Kitguru labs for moving large amounts of data between systems. Today we review something rather special however – the latest high capacity USB 3.0 drive from Corsair which claims to have a read speed around 260 MB/s.

The Corsair Voyager GS 128GB USB 3.0 drive landed with us last week week and it certainly caught our eye. It ships in a sleek metal enclosure and the claimed speeds look to be right up there with the fastest 256GB and 512GB units we have tested, from companies such as Kingston and Patriot.

Package contents

• Flash Voyager GS USB 3.0 flash drive.

Technical Specifications

• Support for Microsoft Windows®, Mac OS X, and Linux with no driver or software installation necessary.
• USB Standard-A connector works with both USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports.

The Corsair Voyager GS 128GB drive ships in a small, brightly coloured blister pack. It is beautifully presented, protected behind a strong plastic cover. The capacity is listed top right, above the product name.

The rear of the packet has more details on the product, including a performance chart which is also visible on the official Corsair webpage, here. Corsair rate it as able to withstand 40G shock, although it is unlikely that an end user will be subjecting the drive to such torturous stress.

The drive itself is very nicely finished with a scratch resistant brushed metal material and feels substantial in hand, as if it could withstand some long term abuse.

The drive is a USB 3.0 model and as such is USB 2.0 backwards compatible, albeit it with serious performance penalties.


It is modestly sized, around the same dimensions as the high performance Patriot SuperSonic Magnum which we use regularly for transferring large files between systems in our labs. The Corsair drive is much more attractive however, with the metal, rather than bright plastic finish.
To test the drive performance today we are using an Intel Core i7 990X Extreme Edition system.

Processor: Core i7 990X Extreme Edition @ 4.8ghz.
Cooling: Corsair H100 Liquid Cooler.
Motherboard: Asus Rampage III Black Edition.
Chassis: Lian Li X2000F.
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W.
Memory: (6 x 4GB) 24GB Visiontek DDR3 1866mhz (10-10-10-24).
Storage: Memoright 240GB SSD & 2TB Samsung storage drive.
Monitors: Dell U3011.
Operating System: Windows 7 64 bit

Comparison Products:
Kingston DataTraveler HyperX Predator 512GB
Kingston DataTraveler HyperX 3.0 64GB
ADATA Nobility N005 Pro 64GB Flash Drive.
Kingston 64GB DT Ultimate Drive.
1TB USB 3.0 Toshiba HDD.

We perform each test multiple times to ensure that abnormalities don’t enter into the test results.

First we copied a folder containing 12 MKV files, totaling 8GB in size. We copied them to and from each of the drives via an internal SATA 6Gbps based Memoright 240GB SSD.

The Corsair Voyager GS 128GB topped our performance chart in the read test – claiming a score of 285 MB/s. Write performance was slightly behind the Kingston DataTraveler HyperX Predator 512GB and Patriot SuperSonic Magnum 256GB – but it was still very closely matched.

Next we copied a folder with many mixed files, ranging in size from simple text based Word documents to several 100 MB video files. The folder size is 1GB. We record the average time taken then work out the speeds of the drives. Again we copy via an internal SATA based Memoright 240GB SSD.

Performance always drops when dealing with a mixed size file folder although the results are still excellent. The Corsair Voyager GS 128GB is the market leader when it comes to reading data.
The next stage is to analyse the performance of the drives with some of the best software available online.

Crystalmark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSD’s.

We tested the Corsair Voyager GS 128GB drive and the results are very positive indeed. We recorded around 289 MB/s sequential read and 181 MB/s sequential write. This is much greater than the claims on the Corsair webpage – although they are only using the ATTO Disk Benchmark.

Due to the nature of this kind of flash, and via the USB 3.0 interface, 4k and 4k QD32 performance is substantially worse than from a native SSD drive across a SATA connector.

Above, a few comparison results for reference.

The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.

Results from the ATTO Disk Benchmark are not as impressive, and actually not reflective of real world results we achieved in the Windows 7 operating system earlier in the review. Sequential read speeds peaked at around 270 MB/s but the sequential write speed dropped to around 75 MB/s.

A few comparisons from other performance drives we have evaluated in recent months.
If you are hunting for a high capacity USB flash drive to back up, or transfer large amounts of data between systems then there is no doubt that the Corsair Voyager GS 128GB is one of the best we have tested.

Read performance is right at the top of the pile, even outperforming the Patriot SuperSonic Magnum 256GB drive, and the Kingston DataTraveler HyperX Predator 512GB drive. Write performance isn't quite as impressive, but it is still just a little behind the Kingston and Patriot flagship drives.

Within the last year we have reviewed high capacity USB 3.0 flash drives, but quite often 256GB and 512GB drives are exorbitantly priced,  targeting only a very small audience.

We always felt that if a company could release a lightning quick 128GB capacity drive for under £100 that it would sell well. Corsair were clearly taking notice.

The Corsair Voyager GS 128GB is available from Scan in the United Kingdom for £91.34 inc vat. At this price it is difficult to ignore, especially if you frequently move large amounts of data between several machines at home, or at work. It manages to compete with the fastest 256 GB and 512GB USB 3.0 drives on the market, while only costing a fraction of the price.

Pros:

• Lightning quick read and write speeds.
• metal chassis looks great.
• Under £100

Cons:

• None.

Kitguru says: A high capacity lightning quick Flash drive set to target a large audience of users who demand ultimate performance, but for less than £100.

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