Pen drives are handy and convenient storage device for people on the go. It is an extremely portable storage device that can be carried anywhere along with you. While it is convenient to use pen drives for receiving and sending data, there is also an increased chance for viruses to come to your computer from your infected pen-drive(s). So how do you protect your pendrives from virus? An easy way is to make them a read only device or in other words, write protect them.
USB Write Protector is a nice and handy tool that can enable or disable write function on a USB device through Windows registry. When you choose, “USB write protection ON”, USB WriteProtector will change the USB write value in registry to 0. When the write function is disabled, we cannot write anything in the pen drive. You won’t be able to copy, paste files/folders or create new files/folders on the USB device then.
For enabling the USB write function, simply choose “USB write protection OFF” in the software to allow write access on the USB drive.
Thus when you insert a write protected USB drive on an infected system, it doesn’t allow the virus to get into the write protected device until the write protection is disabled. This really helps in guarding off viruses and other malicious codes.
Download USB Write Protector by clicking here.
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This thing (as many others) work on the host machine and not from the usb drive itself. So…
As i see it, there are basically 2 common ways to use a usb drive; you transfer data in or out.HA!!!
So i find these apps useless. Because of those 2 common tasks you end up with 4 common operations:
1.You need to give out your data (let’s say to a printing company), you have to ask them to turn writing to usb capability off (not realistic).
2.You need to get data in (let’s say from a friend’s computer), you have to be able to write into the drive.
3.You need to take data into your computer(let’s say from a stranger’s usb drive), you still read it so you don’t have protection.
4.You have to put data into the usb (let’s say to a friend’s usb drive), you have to write, so they don’t have protection.
The idea these apps should be used to protect you from a virus (either from or to a usb drive) is just a bad idea. I still don’t understand the logic behind this!!! (and i know their developers must really struggle with these paradigms, creating something almost pointless)
The only plausible idea i have for these apps is if you know the computer (you are controlling) has a virus. So you turn off writing to transfer data only INTO the host (like a virus repairing tool) which is kinda lame, since you still have to intall these program into the host computer, and you would probably have it in you usb. So by the time you transfer this app to the host computer….the drives would already be infected.
This could only work in 2 instances. If you want to protect someone’s usb from getting a virus from “your” computer or in a workgroup that need to transfer files into an infected machine. Either way, the application of it is virtually pointless.
It’s has some value if you really care about someone who is giving you something and you are uncertain of your virae status or too certain =).
There could be one valuable use for this, which really doesn’t have to do with “infections”, that is forensic analysis of the usb drives, but really…. who uses that? only people that obviously have the writing capabilities off!!
So this would work if the usb drive would carry the read only configuration and not the host!! there’s no logic in doing it from the host people!!! (at least non really valuable)
So maybe you can find “something” cute about it somewhere in your digital life, it’s small and easy. But i have given some cases here… when a tool appears that covers at least 2 things properly (which you control) then we can call it a product.
For now buy a switchable read only usb!!!! you won’t have to worry about getting infected, but you can still infect everyone!!!!
just wait!!
So if you find USB Write Protector useful for your own system, it’s just like buying eveyone on switchable read only key!!!! Ahhhh, the irony!!!
But i’m sure someone will come out with something someday
For now…. get linux, or a mac, not 100% secure, but…. way way better than any windows ever because that, which makes windows good, is which makes windows suck!!
@Dreammo- I agree that Mac is way better than any app as far as security is concerned. Thanks for such a huge block of feedback. Really appreciate it.
This Software does not make the drive read only, it makes the Windows OS where it runs unable to write to USB Storage devices by modifying a registry key… so even if you use it on your computer when plugging the drive to a virus infected computer the virus will be able to write to the pen drive without any problem, put it back in your computer and you will have gain yourself some free virus… Please fix this blog so people is not mislead into believing they are safe using this software…
Thanks for bringing that to notice. I will look into the matter and will update this blog post subsequently.
Faydalı bir program.
Bazı flash belleklerde yazmaya karşı koruma hatası verebiliyor. Özellikle transcend marka flash belleklerde bu sorunla karşılaşanlar. Bu konuya göz atsınlar..
http://www.usbuzmani.com/disk-yazmaya-karsi-korumali/
Useful program.
In some flash memory can be write-protect error. Especially those who encounter these problems in Transcend brand in flash memory. Let them look into this matter ..
write-protect error
http://www.usbuzmani.com/disk-yazmaya-karsi-korumali/
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