Corsair releases its first 32GB USB flash drives

Computerworld - Corsair Inc. today announced its largest capacity USB flash drives in two models, each sporting 32GB of capacity. Corsair plans to demonstrate the flash drives at the Consumer Electronics Show next week.

Corsair is marketing the portable drives by noting that 32GB of capacity allows them to hold 16 full-length, high-definition movies or an entire season of a TV series.

The Corsair GT 32GB USB 2.0 drives are also bootable, meaning they can store full versions of operating systems and applications to quickly "re-create" the necessary software environments to troubleshoot system problems. Corsair said it will not offer up read/write speeds for its drives, saying only that the GT model is up to 4x faster than the average USB drive. Published reports, however, state the 16GB version of the Corsair drive has a 24.5Mbit/sec. read speeds.

The two drives are the Flash Voyager, which comes with a stylishly designed, all-rubber, colorful case and the Flash Survivor, which comes in a waterproof, aircraft-grade aluminum case.

Corsair said the drives come with TrueCrypt open-source security software that uses AES 256-bit encryption for Windows Vista, XP and 2000 systems only. The Survivor drive is water resistant up to 200 meters because of its rubber, waterproof sealed case, and it offers some impact resistance through a thick rubber O-ring around its cap.

Each drive is bundled with a lanyard, security software/driver preloaded and USB extension cable. They come with a 10-year limited warranty.

The drives are compatible with Windows Vista, XP, 2000, ME, Linux 2.4 and later, Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X.

They are currently available in 4GB, 8GB, 16GB and 32GB capacities. The 32GB Flash Voyager will retail for $229.99 and the 32GB Flash Survivor will list for $249.99.

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