Read Only Write Protected USB Drives

[Morgan]

Hello all!

First of all, thank you for having me!

Secondly, I'm not entirely certain that this is the correct area for me to post this, as I'm not sure if it's a hardware or software issue. So I'm sorry if I've gotten it wrong already!

I'm looking to send out USB drives to students of a course, but would like the information on the USB drives to be protected. Ideally, I'd like the data to be read only and write protected (ie not transferrable or able to be modified).

Is there a particular USB drive I should purchase for this? Or are all USB drives capable of this, and I need to download some sort of software?

I've done some research on your site, but it mostly relates to protecting the USB from a virus-riddled computer and I'm not sure if it's applicable to this situation.

Any and all information would be most appreciated. Thank you for your time!

[Kees]

IMO a software issue. In what format is the not-to-be-modified information stored? You write it is to be read only, but also that it is to be non-transferrable, do you mean that it can not be copied? Anyway, write-protection can be achieved by adding some command-line parameter: attrib [filename] -r (if I remember correctly). Another option, perhaps, is to convert the info into a write-protected PDF. Be prepared, though, that anyone who sets himself to bypass such limitations can probably do so.

[hellnoire]

If you're sending out information, despite your best efforts, there's not many way I could think of that you could prevent them from copying and sending the information around. DRM would be the only option I can think of... but with the amount of tools out there to break it these days, it won't work/last long.

You'd be better just to send them a hard copy/get them to get a hard copy if it's that important. That's the problem.

[Raymond]

There are no USB flash drive that comes with the feature to prevent the data from being copied while allowing it readable. A USB flash drive that comes with a write-protect switch is only capable of preventing the file from being deleted, modified or copying new files to the drive.

There are software that can do this for CDs but not sure if it is available for USB.

[hal9000]

I would echo what others have said here, it's very difficult to stop people copying a file if they can read it. There are companies around which can copy protect USB drives but they're more for business and therefore won't be cheap.

I don't know what, or how many files you want to protect, or how tech minded you are, but something you could do is create an executable front end with a piece of software like AutoPlay Media Studio. If you just want your students to view the information and not edit it, the front end could act as the viewer and the files would be hidden inside the exe on the stick so students won't find them unless they knew where to look. Files get extracted to the Windows temp folder but the average user won't know that anyway.

Or course, it's not the ideal thing you might be looking for, but if most of the sticks contain the same data and there isn't too much of it, this might be worth looking at...

[Morgan]

Thank you all for your time and help. It's really appreciated. I guess we'll have to weigh up the risk of the security of the data versus the benefits of the USB. I'll do some more research on what hal9000 suggested, and let you know how we go!

Thank you again.