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Author Topic: \"Read only\" hard drive  (Read 1168 times)

Anonymous

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\"Read only\" hard drive
« on: December 04, 2002, 01:18:44 AM »
I was wanting to make one of my IDE drives read only. Like from a hardware perspective. I was thinking that maybe I could do it by switching on/off certain wires on the ribbon cable. Then when I flip the switch, no way can any data be altered or erased. Does anybody know if it is possable, and if so...what pins to open?
            Thanx, Brad
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Anonymous

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\"Read only\" hard drive
« Reply #1 on: December 04, 2002, 02:14:40 PM »
Even if you could do it that way, the OS would have to recognize it\'s read only status or it would probably crash anytime it tried to write to the drive.
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Offline TheReasonIFailed

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\"Read only\" hard drive
« Reply #2 on: December 14, 2002, 11:14:21 AM »
Why would you want to make it read only?

What OS are you running?
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if at first you dont succeed, call it version 1.0

Anonymous

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\"Read only\" hard drive
« Reply #3 on: December 17, 2002, 02:40:54 PM »
I need a drive that I can write to when needed, but yet only when I need to. No viri or people could corrupt data on it nor erease or modify it.  I run win2k, Linux, and win98.
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Torment

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\"Read only\" hard drive
« Reply #4 on: May 02, 2003, 02:47:34 PM »
One of the easiest ways to do it is by assigning rights to each user for the drive in question.  The you can restrict them to specific areas and prevent them access to al the other areas.  This will work in W2K but for W9x, you would need to activate the policies and then configure them for this.  But, to make a HDD physically impossible to write to?  I don't think it can be done.  As stated earlier, the OS must be able to read and write to it at all times.  Never mind that he doesn't need write access all the time, it must exist.  Is this a workstation that is being shared or is it a server?
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Guest_SpudGunMan

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\"Read only\" hard drive
« Reply #5 on: May 05, 2003, 02:04:23 PM »
THIS IS VERY EASY and was invented a few years back.

the slang word for it was \"CDROM\"

a HDD is for writing! and if that dont make your goose float then put NTFS on that b!7ch and remove all users form write permissions and make that a one time use drive.... expensive and vioatle media if you ask me. Why not a tape drive and break that little write tab off http://images.thetechguide.com/forum/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\';)\' /> or just make a custom IDE cable that allows only RX and CTS commands across it.
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Offline Ausmith1

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\"Read only\" hard drive
« Reply #6 on: May 10, 2003, 12:48:33 PM »
Some hard drives have a jumper that can be set to make the drive read only. This is useful for embedded systems that need a lot of storage or master image disks etc.
See:
http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/dk/5/514s/write.html

Not many (if any) modern drives have this jumper though, it's been a few years since I recall seeing such a jumper on a new drive...
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