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Possible Duplicate:
Make a USB drive read only

I'm trying to my flash-drive read-only so I can stick it into potentially virus infected computers and run the files enclosed.

I have discovered basically 2 ways:

  1. USB Dummy Project - a program that creates a file to take up all free space.
  2. How to Disable Write Access to USB Hard Disk and Flash Key Drives

I don't think the second way will work; a virus can be copied before I can run the program. Is there another way?

Community
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user1015230
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3 Answers3

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  • Some USB drives have a hardware write-protect switch. You could purchase one of these. I have an old 128MB Microsoft-branded "pen drive" that has such a switch. Not sure who actually makes it.

  • Alternatively you could use a full-size SD card which as standard has a small write-protect slider. Make a USB SD card reader part of your recovery kit.

  • The Sandisk U3 drives present the "U3" software as a fake CD-ROM partition - this is necessary since the U3 software unlocks the data on the remainder of the flash drive. I believe it's possible to modify this partition (basically erasing the current "CD-ROM partition" and creating a new one) using various utilities. I'll update this answer later with specifics if I can recall where I found the information.

LawrenceC
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The first method relies on the drive being completely filled, but if a virus can overwrite sections of a file, it can still infect it, so that's not going to work reliably.

The second method disables write access to all USB drives, so can be done before inserting the drive. However, a virus could just unset the registry entry, so that it's not really protected.

The only real answer is to find a USB drive with a hardware write protect switch or assume the drive is going to get infected and reformat it after each use. (Or, of course, trust that your anti-virus program will protect you when you read it on another system).

StarNamer
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Why not use a CD (or CD-RW to be green) to boot a liveCD with utilities to fix such problems. Something like the SystemRescueCD or a flavor of one of the Ubuntu install CDs. The SystemRescueCD has the Clam-AntiVirus utility, along with critical disk tools.

jdh
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