Protect extra drive (FAT32)

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I have my main OS (WinXP Pro) on my C drive. I have an extra backup
drive installed that is FAT32 and is D drive.
How can I protect this drive so that only I have access to it. It needs
to stay FAT32 so I can't convert it to NTFS.
thanks
 
©® said:
I have my main OS (WinXP Pro) on my C drive. I have an extra backup
drive installed that is FAT32 and is D drive.
How can I protect this drive so that only I have access to it. It
needs to stay FAT32 so I can't convert it to NTFS.
thanks
Click to expand...

Ummm...disconnect the IDE or power supply cable(s)?

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I have my main OS (WinXP Pro) on my C drive. I have an extra backup
drive installed that is FAT32 and is D drive.
How can I protect this drive so that only I have access to it. It needs
to stay FAT32 so I can't convert it to NTFS.
thanks
Click to expand...

Simple enough. Go to Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Disk
Management and highlight the drive. Right-click and choose Change
Drive Letter and Path and click the Remove button. That will remove
the drive letter for the drive. When You want to backup to the drive
retrace your steps and click the Add button instead and choose the
default drive letter which will be the one it was previously assigned.
It sounds complicated but it really isn't and only takes a few
seconds.
 
©® said:
How can I protect this drive so that only I have access to it. It
Click to expand...

Got TweakUI installed? If so, hide the drive's letter so it won't
show up in your system at all when you're not using.
 
Simple enough. Go to Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Disk
Management and highlight the drive. Right-click and choose Change
Drive Letter and Path and click the Remove button. That will remove
the drive letter for the drive. When You want to backup to the drive
retrace your steps and click the Add button instead and choose the
default drive letter which will be the one it was previously assigned.
Click to expand...

Nice, but it won't stop anyone from using a Linux boot CD from
accessing anything on the drive since Linux couldn't care less about
drive letters.

Of course, if he's just trying to protect it from his kids (or himself
from trashing the partition accidentally), that's not an issue -
unless his kids know more about Linux than he does...:-)

Just a reminder that it's extremely difficult to protect a machine
where someone else has physical access to it.
 
Thanks for the tips everyone. Is there a solution that does not require
disabling the drive letter, but simply protects it with a password or
something like that (so I still have access to it - just that everyone
else does not...?)
 
I have my main OS (WinXP Pro) on my C drive. I have an extra backup
drive installed that is FAT32 and is D drive.
How can I protect this drive so that only I have access to it. It needs
to stay FAT32 so I can't convert it to NTFS.
Click to expand...

Why does the drive need to stay FAT32?

Regards
Thorkild Dalsgaard
 
On Tue, 03 Aug 2004 06:24:13 GMT, Richard Steven Hack

Just a reminder that it's extremely difficult to protect a machine
where someone else has physical access to it.
Click to expand...

That's why some of us have removable drives. Remove D: and the
problem is solved. If that is too much effort have a key on D: and
don't let other have access to it.


Regards, John.

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v http://clients.net2000.com.au/~johnf/
 
That's why some of us have removable drives. Remove D: and the
problem is solved. If that is too much effort have a key on D: and
don't let other have access to it.
Click to expand...

Yup. Removable is the way to go, as long as you handle the drive
carefully (or use ruggedized drives).

I think removable drives are better than tape for backup since the
backup is faster and faster to restore too, without any conversions
required, and hard drives are more reliable than tape if they're not
used constantly (tapes have to be recycled after so many uses).
It's just more dangerous to drop a drive than a tape.

Likely cheaper, too. Reliable high-capacity tape drives are not cheap
whereas a drive enclosure and a standard HD is not much more than a
regular HD (unless you buy the pre-made removables which tend to be
more expensive - still not anywhere near a good-quality tape drive,
though.)
 
Short of paying the, perhaps, $20. for a removable enclosure, drives are
Extremely easy to remove manually: At minimum, take off the hood of your
computer (like a car hood in ways), and just remove the cable to the controller
and power cable. Voila! drive removed, most bios systems will reconfigure
automatically when you reboot, you need not remove the drive from the machine,
and short of a fire, nothing that messes up in the running computer should
effect the protected/removed drive.

One caution about any/all removed removable drives: Windows tries to install
its operating systems so they only run on the motherboard they were installed
on. If you have a protected/removed drive, and you want to boot from it or run
its version of windows on the `new PC' you just bought -- most likely it will
not boot or run.

Short of literally disconnecting connections and wires, there is an
intermediate solution that at least some of your kids may not think of:

a) Some bios chips and hardware let you disable one or more secondary
drives from the cmos setup screen. These screens are usually password
protected, and it is not all that easy to crack the password, without knowing
a little something.

b) In a similar vein, various boot management software can mark different
disks as active, hidden, etc. You can even get fancy, save a disk's
partition and then use software to install a different kind of partition
(e.g., an NTFS partition on a drive that is really FAT32). The software
can be kept on a floppy off the hard drive. When you want access to
a disk protected like this, write the original boot and partition table
back onto the disk from the floppy
 
howard schwartz said:
Short of paying the, perhaps, $20. for a removable enclosure, drives are
Extremely easy to remove manually: At minimum, take off the hood of your
computer (like a car hood in ways), and just remove the cable to the controller
and power cable. Voila! drive removed, most bios systems will reconfigure
automatically when you reboot, you need not remove the drive from the machine,
and short of a fire, nothing that messes up in the running computer should
effect the protected/removed drive.
Click to expand...

Just a caution on this, especially if you don't normally work inside PC's..
The usual data ribbon cables used for IDE drives are not meant for a lot of
'removal' cycles. Most don't have strain releif and you have to pull on
the cable itself to get the connector out. This can damage the cable
resulting in no access to the drive until the cable is replaced.
 
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