Tip #3812 - USB Becomes Read Only
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USB
Becomes Read Only
In the corporate world,
a lot of time is spent on locking down computers to minimize the risk
of confidential information leaving the company. With the popularity of
USB storage devices growing in recent years, the problem for large corporations
has exploded.
Almost all users want
to use USB storage devices to move data around, but with the size of USB
storage devices increasing so much in recent years, the risk is ever growing
as more and more data could possibly be stolen or lost accidentally. Within
companies, USB storage devices have been banned completely and disabled
from use on company computers.
In Windows Vista though,
there is an alternative that will allow corporate users to be able to
read from USB storage devices, but not write any data to them. This will
effectively turn on USB storage devices for all users and they'll be safer
to use because of the read only feature. This way, users can still read
information off of USB storage devices that a third party vendor may provide
data on, while preventing the employee from writing any data back to the
it.
To set up a read only
USB storage device operation, just follow the steps below. Now, this tip
does require you to work within your registry editor. Be extremely careful
while you're doing this. The registry is not difficult to use if you follow
the directions exactly, but if you're not 100 percent sure you can do
it, please ask someone else for some help. If you make a mistake in your
registry, it could cause you more problems down the road. Okay, now that
all of that is said, let's get started.
1.) In Vista, click
on the Start button and type "regedit"
in the search box and then hit Enter.
2.) Navigate through
to this location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control.
3.) Right click on
Control and select New, then Key.
Call the new key "StorageDevicePolicies."
4.) Right click on
StorageDevicePolicies and select New,
then Dword. Call the new Dword "WriteProtect."
5.) Right click on
WriteProtect and select Properties. Then set
the value to 1 and hit OK.
Your computer is now
configured to disable any writing to USB storage devices. They will all
be read only from now on.
Note:
Although this tip talks about corporate computers the most, this same
configuration can be made for individual desktops for home PC users as
well (that's you!) It's just another way to keep yourself safe with the
new Windows Vista operating system. I'm lovin' it, aren't you?!
~ Ramachandran Kumaraswami
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