Out of the blue last week, a parcel arrived bearing Corsair's Flash Survivor, a ruggedized 8G USB key in a blister pack with a camo-screened cardboard insert with GI-style stencil logo. In fact, the Corsair Web site describes the Survivor as "ultra rugged," which is a challenge if I ever heard one. It's days like these that make me regret opting for the enclosed sunroom instead of the open balcony.
Does it seem rugged? Damn straight. The drive screws into a CNC milled aluminium tube with a seal the company claims is watertight to 200 metres, and if you've got a flash drive in your pocket in more than 200 metres of water, you've got more pressing issues than whether you can recover your data. So yeah, it looks tough. But tough enough to survive a weekend with me? A weekend when I have to do laundry?
The laundry test is a critical one because, well, it's electronic, it's pocket-sized, and it's therefore inevitable that at some point it will end up in the washing machine. (Enter the phrase "cell phone in washing machine" into your Google search bar and you will get 1.7 million hits. Some of you are reading this, cheeks flushed with embarrassment that you've done it yourself. If it happens again, click here to find out how to rescue your phone.)
I prepped the drive with the Portable Apps suite to complicate matters. Sure, maybe you can read the files, but can you run a word processor off it? (If you haven't tried Portable Apps, I recommend it. A whole office suite based on Open Office runs on a USB key — tres handy, tres cool.)
First up, at an informal industry gathering, was the ice water immersion test. (Someone had suggested beer, but beer's too expensive.) After a half-hour plunge, the key emerged unscathed, but with a little condensation.
Over the course of the next few days, we simulated potential shock impacts varying from a mishandled exchange to a several storey drop using the very high-tech method of flinging it at the floor with varying degrees of force. The aluminium container is a litle scarred, but the data cargo inside was fine.
The ultimate test was, of course, the laundry. It went in with the darks (I'm not putting a big chunk of aluminium in with my delicates, thank you) in the pocket of a pair of golf shorts, which seems a natural habitat for a USB key. Not a leak, though the rubber shock rings shifted a bit.
Powered up, all was fine — the applications worked, some .wav files stored thereon played back. So I have to give it a passing grade. If you can destroy one of these, you're a clumsier person than I.