Hard drive protection when sharing

D

d7e7r7

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So my dilemma is I'm always nervous giving my external hdd to a friend of family member in case they cut instead of copy stuff from the drive on their pc or delete stuff by mistake or drag stuff into different folders when trying to drag stuff onto their pc.

Are there any types of freeware software where I can protect my harddrive from any changes unless I say so? Whether it be password protection or running a specific program before changes can be made to the drive.
 
HavocXphere said:
Format as NTFS. Remove write access to folders. Sticks even on other PCs. ;)
Click to expand...

Thanks that could work but say my drive is already formatted FAT/FAT32... That would mean formatting and losing everything and I am not able to back it up to do that at this point...

I have found Prevent (http://www.thewindowsclub.com/prevent-cut-paste-copy-delete-re-naming-of-files-folders) but that needs to be installed on the pc in question and I can't expect friends to install software before they can use my drive...
 
You want it formatted to NTFS anyway because of that stupid 4gb/file barrier with fat32. Remember though that with ntfs the safely remove thing becomes more important.

All those protection progs are a waste of time imo.

If the stuff on the hdd is that important then you need to make another plan anyway. With HDDs given to friends its just a question of *when* the sht hits the fan not if. Idiot trips over wire hdd flies across the room and hits cupboard with a bang. Been there done that....
 
I'll check my hdd in the morning then... Thinking about it, it is probably NTFS formatted because I have some hd movies that are +-8gb's each and you say FAT has a 4gig file limit so I'll check that option out in the morn...

So if I change the NTFS settings on my pc then they'll stick when a friend plugs the drive into their pc?
 
d7e7r7 said:
So if I change the NTFS settings on my pc then they'll stick when a friend plugs the drive into their pc?
Click to expand...
Yes, everything carries over. So if you give your own username write access & nobody else then it should do exactly what you want. Carry it to other PC and then only "Unknown user" has write access.

Make sure they can write somewhere onto the drive though & double-check what you change...its easy to think you've changed it & you haven't (or not subfolders) due to the confusing dialogs. You can't permanently lock yourself out with this stuff though so no worries. ;)
 
Uhm, not necessary to format :)

On your PC, go to command prompt. Then go type : convert {driveletter}:fs /NTFS

It will do an "on the fly conversion" of your hard drive with no data loss or anything else. Just dont stop it mid way as it forces a dismount on the drive and can be tricky to get working again afterwards :)
 
cyberbob1979 said:
Uhm, not necessary to format :)

On your PC, go to command prompt. Then go type : convert {driveletter}:fs /NTFS

It will do an "on the fly conversion" of your hard drive with no data loss or anything else. Just dont stop it mid way as it forces a dismount on the drive and can be tricky to get working again afterwards :)
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip... will come on handy :)
 
But making it NTFS won't protect the drive? All the target user needs to do is take ownership of the files.

The safest thing you can do is have a drive specificly for loaning out.
 
xrapidx said:
But making it NTFS won't protect the drive? All the target user needs to do is take ownership of the files.

The safest thing you can do is have a drive specificly for loaning out.
Click to expand...

Is there no way to prevent people from taking ownership?
 
xrapidx said:
But making it NTFS won't protect the drive? All the target user needs to do is take ownership of the files.
Click to expand...
True. However the kind of person that accidentally cuts instead of copies usually doesn't even know about permissions let alone how to take ownership (The tab is hidden by default & taking ownership is buried 2 levels deeper in dialogs).

d7e7r7 said:
Is there no way to prevent people from taking ownership?
Click to expand...
No.
 
Ive found EASEUS Partition Manager is pretty good at finding deleted files (havent yet had an instance when I couldnt recover all that I wanted to), so you should be able to recover a large percentage of the data with it IF they accidentally delete something.
 
The solution is to tell them to get their own hard drives... and you do the copying for them. :)
I would never lend my hard drive out. The chances of it being damaged are just too high.
 
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