Handy Drive And Viruses

[pete_r]

Ok.

My handy drive is harvesting all the viruses hanging about on the computers around my workplace, as I need to transfer data between the computers and don't have time to clean up each and every computer before I plug the drive.

I've noticed that viruses tend to copy themselves in the drive root folder only, so I'd like to know if there is a way to make the root non-writable, while keeping another folder writable for my transfers? Or to set some kind of password to protect the drive?

Any input welcome.

- The file system on my handy drive is FAT32, but can be changed to another type if necessary (NTFS?).

- The computers in my office are on Windows XP and, as much as I would like to, switching them to Linux is not an option... yet...

[Guest Reimar]

You can write protect the Stick and leave only the required Directories writeable! It's not a 100% protection but better than nothing!

[skyblues]

Op this a very confusing post your handy drive aka USB stick is harvesting all your viruses..what does that mean???

There is no permissions on a fat drive so you need to convert your drive to NTFS to do this go to run and asuming you are using c drive go c: /fs:ntfs which will change to NTFS which you can then give permissions to..as a general rule root and system32 are read/write/modify only while program files,my documents and other no system folders are full control

As far as i know..infact you cant password protect windows files/folders at all without using 3rd party apps

id still like to know more info and if you need more help then PM me and ill see if i can sort it for you!

[nidge]

I'm happy to stand corrected but if this "stick" is a flash drive then it cannot be formatted into NTFS anyway.

[skyblues]

Yes you can but you have to go to Device manager on the stick and change it to 'optimize performanze' then format to NTFS...

but obviously that will wipe everything on it..which is what i dont understand if the OP has a virus on the stick he doesnt just wipe it because depending on what virus it is as soon as he put's it in the USB it will transfer onto the OS(that's if the virus is already active)

[pete_r]

I'm back online... Thanks for the answers so far. Trying to be less confusing, here is the problem: I plug my USB stick on an infected computer (typically a worm infection), the virus copies itself on the stick, then the next computer I have to work with gets infected, and so on. As I don't have time to clean each computer in the office, I want to prevent the virus from writing itself on my USB stick. But I still want to be able to write my data onto the stick.

From the posts above, I gather the USB stick must be converted to use the NTFS file system, then have some permissions set up for each folder. I haven't found the method to do that, so would appreciate some help or pointers.

Thanks in advance,

[Sunny Valentine]

A good start for prevention of virus spread through USB sticks is to deactivate Autostart. In XP you can either manually edit the registry (forgot where I have stored the link with the details) or much easier install tweakUI from Microsoft, where you can do this easily. Vista has a menu for this, hidden somewhere.

This is not foolproof, but you should be able to avoid most virus transfers this way.

Sunny

[pete_r]

A good start for prevention of virus spread through USB sticks is to deactivate Autostart. In XP you can either manually edit the registry (forgot where I have stored the link with the details) or much easier install tweakUI from Microsoft, where you can do this easily. Vista has a menu for this, hidden somewhere.

This is not foolproof, but you should be able to avoid most virus transfers this way.

Sunny

Yep, that's the first line of defense.

Go to: Start -> Run... -> gpedit.msc -> User configuration -> Administrative templates -> System -> Turn off Autoplay -> Enabled on All drives

It does help on my personal computer; my problem is with shared computers where other users double click to open their infected USB sticks (instead of right-click -> explore), which activates the virus transfer to the computer.