Preventing deletion of files from external Hard drive

[Arval Ve]

I happen to own a 2TB external Hard drive full of movies, games, and video shows. My friends borrow my hard drive as my collection of these are vast to a certain extent. But, more than often, they end up Cut-Paste tye contents instead of Copy-Paste, and because of that my conents go missing. I want to make my eHDD read or write only, while disabling cut or delete function when connected to any other device other than mine.

I know about the Security options one can set for hard drive, but it is a user by user case for a device, what I require is to Black list all other devices other than mine, not just user accounts.

It would be even more helpful if there is a function which allows to delete if you know a specific "password" of sorts, just so that I can have access and delete if I am forced to work on a device that is not mine.

Any 3rd party software will also do.

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

Keep a backup of everything on another drive that you never allow anyone to borrow.

Truth be told, you ought to keep all that stuff backed up anyway - - it's just the sensible thing to do.

All my data is backed up three times on 3 separate external drives.

 

[USAFRet]

$50 for another drive will absolutely prevent issues like this.
Never loan out a drive with the only copy of something you wish to keep.

And its not just them with cut/paste.
When one of your friends gets that drive infected with a virus, or drops it off his desk...you'll be glad you had this backed up.

 

[RolandJS]

Not even public libraries can make a HD read-only, at least not the ones I've visited. What they have done is Deep Freeze. However, for your situation, having a master copy of all your stuff on at least one if not two, non-borrowable, locked up til needed, external hard-drives is best. And if, or rather when, a loaner HD returns with less than full directory, you simply copy from backup master onto loaner HD what is missing.

 

[Bluesh1ft]

Hi. You don't need to create a backup to do this. Press windows key and type "diskpart" and press enter. Then "list disk" and select your external hard drive. For example if your external hard drive was "disk 3" you would "select disk 3" then type "attributes disk set readonly". If for some reason you wanted to make it not read only anymore (to add more stuff) then you would open diskpart again. select the disk and type "attributes disk clear readonly" and unplug it and plug it back in.

 

[RolandJS]

Blues, I never knew that a hard-drive itself can be marked Read-Only; I learn something from someday nearly every day, thanks! I still recommend having a master backup -- other things can happen to a loaner HD: malware, viri, MFT corruption, hardware failure...and so on.

 

[USAFRet]

"read only", until your friends friend plugs it into his Linux box.

 

[nobspls]

Once that drive is out of your hands it is out of your control. Worst case scenario, they lost it, dropped in the toilet, got mugged along with their purse, etc. in short anything equivalent to gone for good. If it something you really want to keep, there needs to be more than one copy. And it does NOT even have to be your friend, it can be you yourself that does the same things.

Making the drive read only is a small band-aid. Although you can find drive enclosures like this with write protect lock.
https://www.kanguru.com/storage-accessories/ultralock-external-hard-drive-with-write-protection.shtml?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI-onKxf_k2gIVU7jACh1PBA9qEAAYASAAEgJghvD_BwE
But bottom line, if you only have one copy, all it takes is one mistake.

 

[DrYK]

Never ever give your HDD to your friend with tons of content that u haven't backed up. One day you will regret it when all gets lost. Tell them to bring their drive so they can copy whatever they want from you without moving your drive around.

 

[RolandJS]

"Tell them to bring their drive so they can copy whatever they want from you without moving your drive around." That is another good solution! However, even that operation can go awry. Full image backups which never get loaned out is still a good idea.

 

[Arval Ve]

Hi. You don't need to create a backup to do this. Press windows key and type "diskpart" and press enter. Then "list disk" and select your external hard drive. For example if your external hard drive was "disk 3" you would "select disk 3" then type "attributes disk set readonly". If for some reason you wanted to make it not read only anymore (to add more stuff) then you would open diskpart again. select the disk and type "attributes disk clear readonly" and unplug it and plug it back in.

Thank you, this helped me perfectly.

 

[RolandJS]

"...Thank you, this helped me perfectly...." Until said HD is plugged into a Linux box, or dropped, or lost, or...and so on. Full image backups onto external media is recommended by many across The 'Net.

 

[Bluesh1ft]

"read only", until your friends friend plugs it into his Linux box.

lol yea. I'm on linux myself. with a windows KVM for games using PCI-E passthrough to give my dedicated gpu to the virtual machine.

 

[USAFRet]

Just accept the fact that any "drive" you loan out may be (will be) compromised.
Virus, dropping it, accidental deletion, malicious friend of a friend...