flash drives + extra features - gimmick?

Currently there're many usb flash drives in the market with a questionable extra features. Is the features really usefull and effective? e.g:

1)waterproof - seriously?, no problem if the drive is in my shirt's pocket and it's in the washing machine?

2)build-in anti virus - how far it could prevent virus from infecting the flash drives?

3)shock protection - accidently dropped it onto the floor from table.

what's your experience with this kind of flash drives?

I had a PnY one for about a year. I had it in my shirt pocket, bent over to pick something up in the restroom and it fell out. Next time I tried to plug it in, it wouldn't work. I had to open it up and resodder a couple connections to get my data off (had a back up, but it was a few days old).

I spent a little extra and bough Sandisk Titanium Cruizer. They claim that you can drive a car over it without damaging it. I drop it all the time and have never had a problem.

Waterproof would probably be a good thing, but not a priority.

As for virus protection, that's a software issue and you can get it without paying for it, same with encryption. I only use mine on my work and home PC's, so I'm not too concerned about picking up viruses.

Originally Posted by Remus
Currently there're many usb flash drives in the market with a questionable extra features. Is the features really usefull and effective? e.g:

1)waterproof - seriously?, no problem if the drive is in my shirt's pocket and it's in the washing machine?

Probably seriously. CF cards can survive a washing machine cycle, so I'm sure "hardened" USB drives can too. BBC did a really amusing test of various memory cards to see what they would survive -- all of them survived a washing machine, being stepped on, and having a 3-year-old do everything possible to destroy them. One even survived getting nailed to a tree.

2)build-in anti virus - how far it could prevent virus from infecting the flash drives?

It's one layer of protection, but since it's unlikely to be regularly updated, it's also unlikely to work very well for very long.

3)shock protection - accidently dropped it onto the floor from table.

Gimmick. Flash memory is shock-proof anyway; you can throw it at a wall and the memory will be fine -- if the casing and the USB connection survives the strike.

what's your experience with this kind of flash drives?

The real problem with flash drives is that I tend to lose them. Therefore, I only use really cheap (i.e., free -- the kind that comes with advertisements on) ones, and I only use them to transport non-critical data from one place to another. I don't bother with encrypted flash either; if I need to transport something more sensitive, I just create an encrypted .zip archive of it.

I echo PJ's thoughts - it is all gimmicky. However, I read something last week about flash drives with extra stuff that was infected with a virus … wonderful. I like mine clean and cheap as well. I don't have it in use for anything permanent, nor as a real backup.

I have read reports of faulty USB drives which are labelled to contain up to 2 GB, but are destroying their data instead (in these high regions), because they are faulty or even illegal copies.

But … I'm not absolutely sure we're talking about the same thing … ?

That sound like faked flash drive (re-labelled/re-branded).