Write Protecting a Hard Drive

Is it possible to write protect an external hard drive so that it can not be written or deleted in anyway by the OS? Sort of the write protect tab that you use with a floppy disk.

 

It varies. Some hard drives actually have a jumper (essentially small tab) setting that write protects the drive, but I think these are less and less common these days. You can use various tools that lock entire hard drives, like Cornerstone, as well. You can't natively do this in Windows (that is - Windows won't allow the locking of entire disks), but you CAN write protect any files or folders ON a hard drive - this is probably your easiest bet (just right click on the folder or file, properties, read only). The reason you can't turn on write protect for the entire hard drive is because Windows normally writes temp files (.ini files, settings, a recycle bin, system volume info) so it can recognize the contents of the hard drive, undelete stuff, etc.

 

EWF is the best way, however it is a bit of a pain to set up on externals. I'd go for a software based write protection method as listed above.