usb flash drive and "undeletable" files

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D3x!

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Hi All,

Sorry if this is in the wrong section :confused:

We are looking at giving away to clients electronic copies of our catalogue on branded flash drives but want it that the file cannot be deleted (so you also cannot format the drive) but can still be used to add and remove other files if they want it to keep their quotes on etc.

Is this possible and how?
 
Ultimately, FLASH drives end up becoming a means of spreading viruses.
This is a bad idea, hand out branded usb extension cables instead.
 
D3x! said:
Hi All,

Sorry if this is in the wrong section :confused:

We are looking at giving away to clients electronic copies of our catalogue on branded flash drives but want it that the file cannot be deleted (so you also cannot format the drive) but can still be used to add and remove other files if they want it to keep their quotes on etc.

Is this possible and how?
Click to expand...

Why would you want the file to be undeletable? Surely your catalogue is not going to remain the same forever. Also, people will likely only remove the file if ever they need the space (how big is your catalogue compared to the size of the flash drive?)

Personally, I think your marketing focus is all wrong here. The fact that your client is reminded of your company every time s/he uses the branded flash drive is already a major win for your company.

If you really want to ensure they don't delete your file, give them a reason not to! E.g. couple it with a small, fun, addictive, cheap, branded game, or something like that. Come on, get your creative marketing juices flowing! What general age group does your client base fall into? Do they have kids? If so, can you put someone on the flash drive that the kids will enjoy? Anything that will increase the lifespan of your campaign. Think, man, think! :p

Anyway, the simplest way I know of to make the file undeletable is to create an autorun process (or a process called from the autorun) that grabs a lock on the file (preventing it from being deleted) when the flash drive is inserted. The client could still, of course, task-kill the process and then delete the file.

However, I do not think there is anything out there that can prevent a disk format from being run on the flash drive (I may be wrong, but I don't think there is).
 
D3x! said:
Hi All,

Sorry if this is in the wrong section :confused:

We are looking at giving away to clients electronic copies of our catalogue on branded flash drives but want it that the file cannot be deleted (so you also cannot format the drive) but can still be used to add and remove other files if they want it to keep their quotes on etc.

Is this possible and how?
Click to expand...
It must be possible because I've been wracking my brains how to get around it on one.

Recently the municipality gave away wristband USB flash drives with two partitions. Their brochure etc was on a 26mb read only one and there was the second (1gb aprox.) read/write partition.

I've tried every way I can think of to get rid of the 26mb partition but nada.
 
There is a write-protect mechanism in hardware, you may have seen some of those ones with switches, but then it precludes you writing those other files back to it.

What you want could be likened to receiving a spam email with an anti-delete mechanism built in ;)
 
bwana said:
It must be possible because I've been wracking my brains how to get around it on one.

Recently the municipality gave away wristband USB flash drives with two partitions. Their brochure etc was on a 26mb read only one and there was the second (1gb aprox.) read/write partition.

I've tried every way I can think of to get rid of the 26mb partition but nada.
Click to expand...

You will probably find that it is a custom hardware configuration within the stick which has two separate memory blocks, one of which can be hardware write protected after preloading it with data, leaving the main memory block available for conventional read/write stuff.

Edit: Okay, from the wiki:
Brand and product promotion

The availability of inexpensive flash drives has enabled them to be used for promotional and marketing purposes, particularly within technical and computer-industry circles (e.g. technology trade shows). They may be given away for free, sold at less than wholesale price, or included as a bonus with another purchased product.

Usually, such drives will be custom-stamped with a company's logo, as a form of advertising to increase mind share and brand awareness. The drive may be a blank drive, or preloaded with graphics, documentation, web links, Flash animation or other multimedia, and free or demonstration software. Some preloaded drives are read-only; others are configured with a read-only and a writeable partition. Dual-partition drives are more expensive.

Flash drives can be set up to automatically launch stored presentations, websites, articles, and any other software immediately on insertion of the drive using the Microsoft Windows AutoRun feature.[29] Autorunning software this way does not work on all computers, and is normally disabled by security-conscious users.
Click to expand...

That implies they are custom hardware configurations.
 
Last edited:
Okay, there is this. Basically you "burn" a CD partition onto your flash disk.

However:

If you want to remove CD partition, run each SMI UFD utility or UCDexec.exe . Then, do not select iso file path and click “make” or “Burn”
Click to expand...

So it could still be removed, but it'll be very hard for the clients to remove it.

Also, note of caution:

Warnning!! making CD partition is a little dangerous job. you lose all data or make USB flash drive permently un-useable. Be carefull!!
Click to expand...

*Warning
*permanently

(sorry, couldn't let the typos slide)
 
Park@82 said:
cool, thanks for sharing.
Click to expand...

You're most welcome :)

kayvee said:
Not a bad effort for a Korean translation, I thought.
Click to expand...

Sorry, I'm rather unforgiving when it comes to bad spelling/grammar (it took a monumental effort for me to turn a blind eye to the grammar, but the spelling mistakes just pushed me over the line) :(
 
Thanks All for the advice, suggestions etc!

Na-iem i will go with your idea, leave it so it can be deleted but think up some ways to coax clients not to!
 
It's very easy to delete partitions, including CD boot partitions, from a flash drive, using linux.
 
Brand the flash drive, add a link to your catalogue online to the branding (you can also offer a "catalogue update when they visit your premises).
 
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