It’s tough to find a USB drive that will stand up under extreme circumstances. While none of us exactly plan to have something bad happen to our device, we all know that things do tend to happen. For instance, your drive could slip out of your pocket, land in the street and promptly be run over by a semi-truck. I’ve seen instances of this happening to someone’s phone… so why is it a stretch to think it could happen with your thumb drive?

If you’re like me, you carry around a USB stick full of important information or programs. We’re Geeks, and we need to have quick access to all of our stuff. It’s important stuff, too, right? So how do we know for sure that the data will be intact if something awful should occur when we least expect it?

The new Lacie Xtremkey USB flash drive can LITERALLY survive being run over by a ten-ton truck. Beginning sometime in August, you can grab this device at a cost beginning of fifty smackers. It ranges from 8GB up to 64GB, as well.

So what makes this model so wonderful? Thanks to the highly-resistant 2mm metal pipe casing, it can survive in nearly any environment and temperature (+200C to -50C). The case features resistant screw threads and a rubber O-ring, which makes it watertight up to about 100 meters of water. It can survive drops of about 16 feet without taking any damage. It’s only 3 inches long and boasts write speeds of up to 30 Mb per second.

The question now becomes: Why WOULDN’T you want this?.

Go Ahead – Run Your USB Drive Over with a Truck

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I don’t think that I’ve heard heard anyone say “dang… I have too much capacity on my Flash drive”. You can never have too much space in my opinion. About a year ago I bought a 2GB Flash drive. What’s the highest capacity USB drive you have owned? Most of our chatters indicated that they own about a 2GB. I happen to have a 32GB Corsair Flash drive in my hot little hands. After the rebate, it was only $100.00. Of course, I found a coupon to help.

As time passes, flash drives get cheaper and cheaper, and even as we speak, prices are ridiculous, but they keep going down. When I say “ridiculous,” I think about those days, not so long ago, when a 128Mb USB drive was worth a little fortune. Now, for that price, you can get a 8GB drive, and also get drunk. Anyway, instead of getting drunk, maybe you could also consider buying a…32GB drive?

The Corsair Flash Voyager family of USB drives are rugged, stylish, compact, and reliable, making them ideal for transporting MP3s, digital images, presentations and more. Flash Voyager drives are fully Plug and Play with most operating systems and are backward compatible with USB 1.1.

The Corsair Flash Voyager family is comprised of two outstanding products. The Flash Voyager GT is designed from the ground up for speed, optimizing transfer rates of both reads and writes, while Flash Voyager provides a durable USB drive in large capacities.

The Flash Voyager and Flash Voyager GT are enclosed in the Corsair proprietary all-rubber housing. Boasting water-resistant properties, these drives allow users to carry more valuable data and applications without compromise. Several reviews of the Flash Voyager products have demonstrated the ruggedness, durability, and reliability of the Flash Voyager family. The Flash Voyager has been shown laundered, baked, frozen, boiled, dropped, and even run over by a SUV in many third party reviews. After all the punishment it receives, the drive continues to work.

If you don’t like the U3 software, you can download the uninstaller from their website. I have about 9GB of apps on my Mac. I think I may keep these on this drive, so I can use them on other machines without having to download or install. I’ve always been happy enough with Corsair to spend the money and try it out. It was well worth what I spent, for sure.

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What’s the Best USB Flash Drive to Buy?

So, one of the nifty new features of Windows Vista is ReadyBoost – a feature that enables you to plug in a USB 2.0 Thumb Drive and have it show up as physical memory in your system. I wanted to give this a shot, so I rushed out and picked up the highest capacity USB 2.0 drive that I could find: A PNY Attache 4.0GB USB stick. I plugged ‘er in, selected the “Speed up my System” AutoPlay option, and waited for the magic to happen. Turns out, it’s not fast enough!? Okay, so back to the store I’ll go – looking for a high-capacity, high-speed USB 2.0 thumb drive to ReadyBoost my Vista laptop. Since Microsoft isn’t making any recommendations, I need to start compiling a list of which sticks work and which ones won’t. Gotta find a Wiki plugin for WordPress!

Vista ReadyBoost