How to Write Protect a USB Drive?

[cardiac]

I have a 160gig External USB 2.0 drive that I use to store family pictures on. I would like to let other family members use it to copy what they want off of it. But, I'm afraid that they will delete some things while using it. Not intentionally of course, but it may happen. How can I do this on a drive that might be use on 3-4 different systems? Only thing I found involved installing software on each system, which isn't feasable.....

Thanks a bunch,

Bob

 

[cardiac]

No one???

 

[Jeff7]

If it's NTFS, which it should be with a drive of that size, you can set the file permissions to allow for reading and directory listing, but nothing else.
But since it's going to be in use on multiple systems, it won't exactly be secure....maybe set it to grant only your username Full Control, but also give user Everyone access, but set that to read-only.
Do this in the root folder, and set it to propagate the changes to all subfolders (Advanced button in the Security tab); as I understand it, that should automatically apply the permissions to any new files you add.

 

[cardiac]

I will give that a try. Hope it does what I need.

Thanks a bunch,

Bob

 

[VirtualLarry]

I've always wondered why HDs don't have physical write-protect jumpers like the old floppy drives/disks do. Surely there would be some applications for that sort of thing, especially for "secure" systems. One could validate it, connect the write-protection jumper, and then affix a security-seal over the jumper on the drive itself, and that could be used to verify that the system hasn't been tampered with, at least not directly in that way.

 

[cardiac]

Well, Larry, that is just what I was hoping for....Maybe we need to invent this.........

Bob