asked on

add write-protect to external USB hard drive

here is my situation.

I made a bootable USB 500 hdd (hdd and case were bought separately) with lots tools in it. such as bartpe, reset pwd tools and so on.
I use it to boot up workstations or laptop and perform troubleshoot/maintenance works, but once a while, it gets corrupted or accidentally written by workstation during boot up or infected by virus, which cause me big time to re-create the tools and copy data over to external hdd again.

so I'm looking for a solution that can enable write-protect on regular external hdd.

note: setting up permissions on hdd does not seem to work since write operation seems happen accidentally during boot up.

many thanks

kode99

There are inline USB units to prevent writing to a drive. Used for forensics and not all that cheap. Here's a couple units,

http://www.wiebetech.com/products/USB-WriteBlocker.php

http://www.digitalintelligence.com/products/usb_write_blocker/

Weibetech's forensic drive docks also can be set to read only for connection directly to a drive.

Here's a program that you might find useful, whole let less cost than a hardware unit - though not as functional.

http://www.irongeek.com/i.php?page=security/thumbscrew-software-usb-write-blocker

Dr. Klahn

Some IDE hard drives do have write enable jumpers, though I have not seen them on recently made drives and never on a 2.5" or SATA drive.

Ikelca

ASKER

thanks for the info kode99
i dont mind spend a little extra $ to find a way, but problem with the writeblocker unit is they are not handy enough yet expensive.

ideally, i prefer an enclosure that has a switch to disable/enable write operation on HDD.
in addition, i dont think any s/w based solution could work here, because they are windows based s/w and it will be non-functioning under ghost 32 or ghost dos version.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

kode99

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial