Write Protect and Disable USB Drive
For the sake of convenience, users sometimes like to copy their working files into a USB drive. Instead of bringing their own laptop, they tend to bring their USB to a client’s office to print or show the workings to clients and others using available PCs. This could pose potential risk of exposure to virus infection especially if the PC you are using does not have an up-to-date antivirus application installed. As today’s viruses are crafted to perfection and have evolved to become more sophisticated, the damage to files stored in your pen drive and even the infection to your laptop later could be substantially catastrophic. To avoid this unnecessary headache, of course you can choose to install antivirus application to your USB drive for security protection. Alternately, you could write protect your USB drive as the ideal solution.
Most USB drives have a small write-protect switch or slider like what you used to find in floppy disks which can be used to lock the drive as read only. If your USB drive doesn’t have one, to write protect or disable write access to the removable USB drive, you can try the registry hack of WriteProtect in StorageDevicePolicies registry key as highlighted in our earlier post. If editing registry files is something you will only do last, perhaps some of the applications below could help you.
PenProtector
PenProtect is a useful application to protect your removable disks from the addition of new files. With this application, it can prevent viruses, trojan, malware, etc from spreading and writing to your pendrive. Compatible with Windows 95,98,Me,XP,Vista, this application doesn’t require installation in the pen drive. What users need to do is just copy an executable file to the drive. To write protect the drive, users just need to execute the file by double clicking it. Another double clicking to the executable file will remove the protection instantly. It is quick, simple and easy to use. The shortcoming of this application is it is not free.
ThumbScrew
Thumbscrew is a free application which allows users to write protect their USB drive. It can be downloaded via the link here. Once it is installed, users just need to right click the System Tray icon and choose “Make USB Read Only” to activate the write protect.
USB Write Protector
Similar to ThumbScrew, USB Write protector is another free utility to write protect your USB drive. This utility is tiny in size and you can carry it along with you in your removable USB drive. USB Write protector can be downloaded via the link here.
With these applications above, you can easily write protect your USB pen drive from being accessed through the system. If you happen to come across better applications to write protect USB flash drive, feel free to share with us.
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Entries (RSS)
January 13th, 2010 04:32
The problem with most of those apps (thumbscrew for sure) is that all they do is manipulate the registry key on the local PC that prevents the legitimate OS from writing to the USB drive.
A compromised system is not likely to ‘honor’ that setting, and for that matter, you can have a chicken and egg scenario if the utility that prevents the PC from writing to the USB drive is ON the USB drive, and hence you have to stick the drive into the (non-write-disabled) system before you can turn off the ‘write to usb’ capability.
Disabling autorun has other problems, but I tend to agree, I don’t like to enable it. I’d rather manually elect to use autorun when it’s needed for an installer or U3 utility or whatever.
In the long run however, if you seriously want a USB flash drive to be protected, you need one with a feature (hardware switch is probably best) that enables you to ‘lock’ the drive from being written to. There’s potentially drives that allow this via software, but if there’s a way to run a program to re-enable the drive for writing (be it from the drive or not) then it’s probably possible for a virus that knows about such drives to flip those bits itself. So really I think if I’m paranoid (like for a ‘took-kit’ or ‘anti-virus-rescue’ drive or something, I’d want a hardware switch
January 9th, 2010 18:22
SRSLY. my memory card has been write-protected with out me knowing
and i want to copy files to my memo card but can’t T_T how can i remove the copy write thingy? 
i tried reformatting but still the problem showed 
(((( please help. you can instant message me in my e-amil teshino9@yahoo.com 
September 7th, 2009 03:13
“You should also make clear that once you do enable the write protect, it’s only on THAT PC. It’s not write protected anywhere you take it…which is what people are truly looking for.”
Totally agree with gmo entry, April 8th, 2009 04:12.
When using USB Write Protector it only works in the PC that it was set, the USB drive will not be write protected in any other PC. What is needed is a way to actually write protect the portable USB drive itself.
April 9th, 2009 23:39
The tips in this article are useless, it only helps spreading viruses from supposedly infected machines in your company to the outside, but not the other way around, and this is what most company want to prevent.
The best method is to disable autorun, see http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/TA09-020A.html for more details.
@yeyet
Be careful, the policy trick only works as expected after you installed http://support.microsoft.com/kb/967715 from M$.
Without this patch, with Vista it might even have the opposite effect of enabling autorun.
April 9th, 2009 09:14
One of the main problems with USB flashdrives is the autorun feature built in Windows. To greatly reduce the risk of infection from a flashdrive, we just need to turn off autorun.
Here is how I turn off autorun:
1. Click on Start->Run
2. Type gpedit.msc then press ENTER
3. In the Group Policy, Expand the following:
Local Computer Policy -> Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates
4. Under Administrative Templates, click on System. Dont expand it, just click on it
5. On the right-pane, scroll down and look for Turn Off Autoplay. Double-click on it.
6. Select Enabled option, then select All Drives from the combobox.
7. Press OK button.
That should turn off the annoying autorun for good.
April 8th, 2009 04:12
The problem with the above utilities is that it requires a small installation package on the PC itself, so unless that is installed you cannot write protect your device. Many users don’t want to load yet another mini app.
You should also make clear that once you do enable the write protect, it’s only on THAT PC. It’s not write protected anywhere you take it…which is what people are truly looking for.
But, those are some nice apps if it fits your need.