34 replies to this topic

[Mad Dog Vee]

I'm confused.

I removed a U3 garbage from a USB stick and then formatted it to NTFS. All that worked like a charm as far as I could tell.

However, now I cannot copy, cut or paste any files to it. What's the problem?

EDIT: Does it only work on the machine it was formatted on? As I formatted it on XP Pro, took it out, plugged it into Vista to copy stuff to it but access was always denied, no matter what I copied. I thought a run as admin was needed but couldn't find an option for it by right clicking the drive that usb stick was allocated.

EDIT 2: I think I'm starting to get it, that's how the security of the NTFS format of a USB stick works, nothing rogue can copy and I presume execute from it that way.

Feel free to help me out with a better explanation.

[exile360]

Greetings MDV. Those U3 drives are tricky little devils. There's actually a special procedure to getting rid of the U3 partition. That could be why it's messed up now. To fix it, I'd try reinstalling U3 and then remove it properly. By default, Windows installations do not allow normal USB devices to auto-execute, so there's really no need to fear if your flash drive gets infected, as long as you right click it in explorer and select open so that you know you're browsing the files on the drive and not running anything. You can also create your own custom autorun.inf file in the root of the USB drive and make it read only to help prevent it being overwritten by flash drive infecting malware.

[exile360]

An additional note, you might have a look at this MS KB article for info on how to completely disable autorun for all drive types, or just the ones you want selectively.

[Mad Dog Vee]

Believe it or not I managed to get it working. I used the u3 uninstall tool to remove the u3 rubbish and then formatted it to NTFS.

Thankfully I have a copy of Total Commander, it seems I need admin rights to be able to copy to the USB stick now - at least on my Vista Home Basic machine. Total Commander allows me to do copying run as administrator.

On the XP Pro machine that I formatted it on, so far it appears I do not need anything. I'm thinking that is probably because I was logged in as an administrator though. I set it up with an admin and limited account. I normal use just the limited account.

[exile360]

That's still odd, unless you somehow set the partition as read only or something. Of course, flash drives are normally formatted as FAT, not NTFS, so that could have something to do with it as well.

[Mad Dog Vee]

Thank you. I thought it was odd too.

I changed it to NTFS for security purposes and have since presumed that NTFS requires admin privileges to copy to it.

At first I thought it was TeraCopy failing me with large file size of progs I wanted to copy but then a simple notepad.txt wouldn't work I knew something was up.

Then with the advantage of TotalCommander which provides me with a check box that says

"Copy NTFS permissions (may need administrator rights)"

which of course I tick and allow it all to proceed and it works fine.

I will check to see how it functions on my limited account on XP Pro and see if I need to go through the same steps.

In the meantime I will continue presume that NTFS requires admin privileges to copy or paste to it.

[Mad Dog Vee]

I can confirm it is the NTFS issue that requires admin privileges.

[exile360]

Figures. I'd go FAT32 then, just for the convenience, but that's your call. Like I said, if you go by the MS KB article I posted, you can prevent anything from autorunning from any type of media (including CD's).

[Mad Dog Vee]

I wanted this particular USB drive to be a bit more secure, but physically it strikes me as a whole lot more fragile.

[exile360]

Hee hee, if you really want to make it invulnerable to attack you can put U3 back on then use a special tool someone developed for replacing the U3 partition with your own custom ISO (can't really talk much about it here as it's kinda hack-ish) then put the files you want on your custom ISO, and since Windows will see it as a CD-rom device, it will be totally read-only and therefore off limits to anything that tries to write to it. I did it with mine and replaced U3 with a custom image of Bart's PE.

[Mad Dog Vee]

I'm actually trying to get my hands on a write protect usb stick, little slider or tab on it like the floppies used to have, but is proving difficult. It's an idea I'll keep in mind though E360

[exile360]

I haven't seen one of those, cool idea though if it's possible.

[Mad Dog Vee]

It's definitely possible, I've made some enquiries and just waiting for some people to get back to me.

[exile360]

Cool, any idea how it works? I know with floppies it worked the same way as VHS tapes, a tab that would normally push through the little hole lets it write to the disk, but if locked, it couldn't push through so it wouldn't write to it. With USB it seems it would have to be some strange sort of software means.

[Mad Dog Vee]

I haven't seen one in person yet but my understanding is the same sort of floppy mechanism. There's a little slider you use that makes it write protect. Only ones that claim to be write protect USB seem to be some weird brand - PQI

[exile360]

I've heard of PQI, they make Ram as well. A pretty good company from what I hear. You might find what model #'s have the write protection feature and do a search on newegg.

[Mad Dog Vee]

Unless they ship outside the US, NewEgg probably isn't much good to me.

[Mad Dog Vee]

PQI-U339-16GB

PQI-U339S-16GB

PQI-U339-2GB - the one I want to chase up

So basically anything in the U339 series

[exile360]

I believe they do (not positive though). Where are you from (if you don't mind me asking)?

[DaChew]

Quote

Where are you from (if you don't mind me asking)?

Group: Honorary Members
Posts: 75
Joined: 7-December 08
From: Australia

That's down off the coast of New Zealand