How to make an Undeletable & Uneditable file in a thumb drive.

Question

Level 1

5 points

How to make an Undeletable & Uneditable file in a thumb drive.

I am giving someone a USB Flash Drive/Thumb Drive with important files inside that I do not want any person, even him, handling the thumb drive to delete, only myself.

I have already taken these steps in the "Get Info" page of each file:

1. in the Sharing & Permissions part of each file, I've selected "Read Only" for anyone other than myself.

2. In the General part of each file, I ticked "Locked".

I would like to know if the steps above would make the files undeletable and uneditable to the person I am giving the thumb drive to.

Thank you.

MacBook Air, macOS Sierra (10.12.6)

Posted on Sep 24, 2017 10:02 AM

Reply

Answer 1

lkrupp

Level 7

22,603 points

Sep 24, 2017 10:05 AM in response to xeloz01

The settings you mention are applicable only to macOS. If someone mounts the USB drive on a Windows or Linux machine those settings mean nothing.

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Answer 2

HD

Level 5

4,945 points

Sep 24, 2017 10:42 AM in response to xeloz01

They will be able to format the thumb drive using Disk Utility on a Mac, or the equivalent on a Windows PC.

The closest I think you're going to get is to burn the files to a read-only CD or DVD. Even then someone else could copy the files off and edit them, or physically destroy the CD/DVD.

They could indeed physically destroy the thumb drive...

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Answer 3

dialabrain

Level 10

136,115 points

Sep 24, 2017 10:58 AM in response to xeloz01

There are "lockable" USB flash drives which in effect makes them read only. I don't think there is a software solution.

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Answer 4

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,222 points

Sep 24, 2017 10:05 AM in response to xeloz01

There is no way to do that. Some apps allow you to password protect the files so they cannot be edited, but I don't know how effective that is. It would also not be possible to prevent deletion in that way.

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Answer 5

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,222 points

Sep 24, 2017 10:11 AM in response to xeloz01

It will not be usable in Windows without third-party software. Not sure about Linux.

It doesn't matter what settings you create. If they have control of the thumb drive, they can do anything they want with it.

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Answer 6

xeloz01 Author

Level 1

5 points

Sep 24, 2017 10:09 AM in response to lkrupp

The file system of the thumb drive, I formatted to MacOSX Journaled, will that make it usable in windows and linux as well? also, what did I do with those settings then?

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