Solved! Is it possible to make a HDD read-only?

[AnitaPeterson]

Hello folks,
I hope this is the best place to ask - since it deals with storage and all...
As per the title, I'm interested to know if there's any way in which an external HDD (USB-powered) can be made read-only.

Case in point:
I have a large digital music collection on a portable 2TB drive.
I'd like to be able to take it with me on trips, vacations, parties and so on.
But at the same time I want to make sure nobody can mess with it - you know how some people with butter fingers (particularly if left unsupervised!) may drag a folder into another, or delete something by accident.

The idea is to make the HDD idiot-proof, so that the file structure remains the same at all times, and no changes can be made to the folders themselves.

Is this possible?

 

[UsandThem]

I'm not sure about making it read-only......I'll let someone chime in on that one.

But as far as being concerned with someone accidentally deleting or altering content on the drive, the option I know is encrypting the external hard drive.

Some units offer it with hardware encryption (like WD My Passport), but you can also use something like BitLocker to do it if you buy one that doesn't offer that, or if you buy a hard drive to put into an enclosure yourself (if you have Windows 10 PRO): https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/36701-turn-off-bitlocker-removable-data-drives-windows-10-a.html

 

[AnitaPeterson]

An interesting idea to use Bitlocker.

But in that case, wouldn't the HDD become unreadable on any machine that doesn't have Bitlocker installed? That pretty much defeats the purpose of taking it with me to parties or when visiting friends

The idea is that we should be able to access the music on it - and play it with whatever default player exists on a given computer - but no changes are allowed.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Uhh, you know, you could... keep a NAS at home, and keep backups of all of your externals.

I knew someone that had a five-year music collection on an external HDD. Well, they got drunk one night, and bumped it. CRASH. Down it went. Along with five years of painstakingly-collected music.

Now, to my credit, I (previously) had given this person several spindles worth of DVD recordable blanks, and told them, that they should back up their music collection. Did they? Of course not...

Well, there's always the first time. (For massive data-loss.) That's what it usually takes, for people to learn to back things up.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

Yes, making a back-up on an identical HDD and then storing the back-up in a safe place is the ultimate solution. And I'm already doing that

But I was wondering about the idea in my OP as an additional layer of protection.

 

[mxnerd]

How to Set a Disk or Volume Read-Only in Windows 10 / 8 / 7 | Password Recovery

This tutorial shows you how to set a particular disk or volume read-only in Windows 10 / 8 / 7, without using any third-party software.

www.top-password.com

You won't get any "New" or "Delete" actions if you right click anywhere on the drive. You also can't copy files from somwhere else and paste into the disk.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Honestly, I wish more USB flash-drive makers would do that (make a read-only switch). I believe that Kangaroo makes "jump drives" with a "READ-ONLY switch".

It's actually such a fundamental computer-science issue, similar to how we no longer use ECC RAM by default for consumer systems, even though we clearly SHOULD, it's kind of surprising. Floppy-disks had READ-ONLY switches, and so do full-sized SD cards. It's just Good Computing Practice, to block viral spread, etc. (Kind of like... wearing masks!)

I haven't see too many or really, any, external HDDs with read-only switches, but I could see that on some portable drives. It would make certain sense, when you have "originals", that you don't want modified.

In fact, not even getting into the nefarious or accidental - what happens when you plug your "media collection", into a particular PC, and their "player app", decides that it wants to categorize your media, and "download new meta-data" for your files, modifying them in the process. What a pain!

I know that in terms of computer forensics, to collect legal evidence, they have devices, they call "write blockers", that sit in-between the interface, and essentially block all writes to the media, to gather a "forensic image". But these are expensive, specialized (I don't even know if they'll sell you one if you're not an LEO of some sort), and not at all consumer-oriented.

The only thing that I can think of, off-hand, was a 2.5" HDD caddy with USB interface, and an LCD screen, I believe, made by Zalman. Unsure if it's still being made, but it was intended to store MULTIPLE ISOs, for a technician to use, to install OSes from and boot diagnostics. I believe that it had a read-only feature, that required a password or a switch or something, to write new ISOs to it. I don't know if that would work for regular media files, or if it was specific to only holding ISO files. Might check it out.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

How to Set a Disk or Volume Read-Only in Windows 10 / 8 / 7 | Password Recovery

This tutorial shows you how to set a particular disk or volume read-only in Windows 10 / 8 / 7, without using any third-party software.

www.top-password.com

You won't get any "New" or "Delete" actions if you right click anywhere on the drive. You also can't copy files from somwhere else and paste into the disk.

Excellent! This is EXACTLY what I was looking for! Thank you kindly!

 

[iamgenius]

How to Set a Disk or Volume Read-Only in Windows 10 / 8 / 7 | Password Recovery

This tutorial shows you how to set a particular disk or volume read-only in Windows 10 / 8 / 7, without using any third-party software.

www.top-password.com

You won't get any "New" or "Delete" actions if you right click anywhere on the drive. You also can't copy files from somwhere else and paste into the disk.

Does it work for external drives? And will the attribute setting last and be permanent if you plug the external drive into another machine? Or will it only be available in the machine that was used to set the attribute?

 

[Magic Carpet]

Best, to use something like that or maybe this. Software based protection is not reliable.

Does it work for external drives? And will the attribute setting last and be permanent if you plug the external drive into another machine? Or will it only be available in the machine that was used to set the attribute?

Only works on the same machine. You may fiddle with the files/folders attributes individually, however that will only work on NTFS volumes and Windows only.