Due to the small size of USB flash drives, consumers often carry these about either on their keychain, in their pocket or other places where they often end up being subject to shock, moisture and other abuse.  It is not uncommon to even hear about USB flash drives being dropped into a puddle or even going through a wash cycle.  As a result, quite often flash drives reach the end of their life by physical damage before they get anywhere near their write and erase cycle limit. 

Now, Corsair has introduced its flash survivor line designed to withstand common flash drive abuse, including water-proof to 200 Meters (20 Atmospheres) and a rubber moulded collar shielding to withstand impact force.  Corsair claims to have designed and engineered its flash survivor line to be the industry's toughest USB drive.  Other physical features include CNC-milled aluminium encasing, an EPDM waterproof seal and an engineered outer metal tube featuring two end caps to prevent collapsing under abuse. 

When it comes to performance, the flash survivor drive is designed to deliver a sustained read and write transfer rate of 34MB/sec and 28MB/sec respectively.  With the help of dual channel and interleave memory technologies, Corsair guarantees the drive to be up to 5 times quicker than the average USB drive.  The Flash Survivor series comes preloaded with security software to create a secure password-protected hidden partition with the use of 256bit AES encryption.

Both the Flash Survivor GT 8GB and Flash Survivor 4GB are now shipping with a manufacturer's suggested retail price of US$129.99 and $59.99 respectively.  These are backed by a 10-year limited warranty.

Further info can be read in this Corsair Press Release.