Need advice on which USB flash drive to buy

Korlash

Hi.

Since my research is starting to involve very large files (1 gig is not unusual), and since I like to personalize my software, I'm looking to buy a 16 gig USB flash drive that I could put portable apps on and use to transfer my files. The stuff I'm going to be putting on it is important data, and it comes in big files, so I'm especially looking for a flash drive that will last for a long time, and one that has good transfer speeds.

I think I've narrowed it down to these two:

CORSAIR Flash Voyager 16GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive Model CMFUSB2.0-16GB
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233042

Patriot Xporter XT Boost 16GB Flash Drive (USB 2.0 Portable) Model PEF16GUSB
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220253

I've heard the Patriot is known to have some of the fastest transfer speeds on the market, but corsair is a pretty respectable company and their flash drive looks better manufactured.

So, anyone had any bad experience with these two? How fast are they?

At the moment I would go for the Patriot, but I'm looking for advice, and I'd like to know if you've heard of a great deal/better flash drive.

RSP

I actually have four of the 8gb version of the Patriot Xporter, and I figure the 16gb is likely to be the same thing as far as transfer rates. I boot Arch Linux from all four in a RAID0, formatted as ext2. Read benchmarks at 30MB/s for each drive (except one of the four which consistently benchmarks at 32MB/s and also has one extra cylinder, oddly enough). Unfortunately I can't really test write times on an individual drive for you as that would screw up the RAID configuration.

While I haven't tried the Corsair drives, I can say that the Xporter is a good choice. The only thing is that it's just a bit too large to fit in a USB port right next to another device, but each drive comes with its own little extension cable so it's not really an issue.