Have you ever attached a USB to a computer and later found out that the drive is infected by a virus? I have definitely faced this situation many times. If you attach your USB drive to the infected computer the virus is transferred to the drive in no time infecting all the important documents in USB drive too, depending on the nature of the virus you may loose important data from the USB drive and never recover them back. But there is a solution to protect your USB drive from virus infection when it is connected to already infected computer.
If you make your USB drive into non writable mode then any kind of data can’t be written to it which means that if a virus infected computer is going to transmit any virus to drive, it won’t be able to because USB drive is write protected.
Write Protect Switch
Certain USB flash drives comes with write protector switch in them, using which you can write protect the USB flash / pen drive or make them read only drives. If the write protect feature is missing in the USB flash / pen drive then you can use USB Write Protector utility.
ThumbScrew
Thumbscrew is a freeware application that lets you write protect your USB drive so that virus, Malware, Trojan or any kind of infection from host computer would not be able to write anything on your USB.
Now right click the system try icon and choose Make USB read only. This would make the USB drive write protected which makes it completely protected from infections to to spread onto your drive.
USB Write Protector
USB Write Protector is another free utility that allows you make write protect your USB flash / pen drives just like Thumbscrew mentioned above. This is a very small utility that you can always carry with you in your portable drive.
By these applications your pen drive would be protected on that shared system but it is still recommended for you to use a quality antivirus software, and keep it updated regularly.
Editor’s note: I am currently using AVG antivirus, and my readers prefer NOD32, both are great antivirus software. So you can use any one of them.
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9 Comments
try naevius usb antivirus
It only write protected the computer you are working on, it does not change the USB’s protection when u attached in a different computer.
If I take the USB and attached to a different computer, it still can copy contents to the USB stick.
I want a program that can turn on/off write protection within the USB stick, so anywhere I go the USB will be write protected.
Try Autorun Protector, it protect your PC and removable device from autorun worms.
hi i m tired of cleaning viruses n i want better security for my USB
why can't someone just make a firewall, or security program, that work ON THE USB, not any computers so that the USB has its own firewall. that would be sooooooo much easier!
If I do that (Write Protect) in My USB drive. In other session I can't transfer file to USB, and I think it's Useless.
You know how I protect my USB….I go to My Computer, then right click on Removable Disk and then Properties. After that see how much free memory Ihave and than I make file adding exact number of free bytes….That’s it…PROTECTED
Note: If you want to add a new file to USB, first delete the file you made and then check free memory and create file again……THANKS
Hahaha…..
Panda USB Vaccine disables ‘auto-run’, and can be installed on a USB drive &/or on a computer. You maintain the ability to write to your USB drive.
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