By Sophia | Last Updated
Due to the small size and portability of USB flash drive, USB flash drive is gradually becoming a data transfer tool frequently used in daily work, and we always worry about the important files in USB flash drive being spread freely. How to use a USB flash drive to store files while preventing others from copying the files inside? In this post, I will guide on how to protect files on USB from being copied .
Step 1: Launch a run dialog by pressing "Windows+R" to type the regedit code, click "OK".
Step 2: After that, follow the prompted path to find and click to expand the "Control" folder: Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet001\Control.
Step 3: Right click on the "Control" folder, create a new key and name this "Key" as "StorageDevicePolicies".
Step 4: Right click on the blank space in the right window of "StorageDevicePolicies folder" and edit "New", then select the DWORD (32-bit) value and rename the "Value" to "WriteProtect", then double-click it, change "Value data" to 1, click " OK", restart your computer, your USB drive files in this computer will not be copied.
Step 1: Right-click the desktop of your computer and create a new "Text Document".
Step 2: Open the new text document and enter the following code, then save and close the document.
@echo off
reg add HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies /v WriteProtect /t REG_DWORD /d 00000001
echo Successful
pause
echo Protect files on USB from being copied
Step 3: Rename the new document, change the "txt" to "bat", click "Yes", your USB drive on this computer is write-protected and denied access.
Step 4: If you need to cancel the setting that the u-disk cannot copy access is denied, you can change 00000001 to 00000000.
Although it is possible to prohibit the copying of USB flash drive files through the computer's Group Policy, it can be restored by others through the settings of the operating system and the settings are only applicable to the local computer. If you want to better protect your important files from being copied, the best way is to use a professional USB flash drive encryption software to encrypt your USB flash drive for management. The following tutorial takes ISunshare SafeUSB Genius as an example.
Step 1: Download and install ISunshare SafeUSB Genius, then insert your USB flash drive into your computer and click "Encrypt" to go to the next step.
Step 2: Enter and confirm your password, then click the "Encrypt" button to start encryption and wait for it to finish.
Step 3: When the screen shows the "Encrypted successfully" prompt, click "OK". When others get your USB flash drive and want to copy files from it, they will find that the contents of the flash drive are empty and no one can see the contents of the flash drive without the password.
Step 4: When you want to display the files on your USB drive, just click the "Decrypt" button, enter the password, and all the files on your USB drive that are encrypted will show again.
Conclusion:
How to protect the files on a USB flash drive from being copied is a long battle. When it comes to how you can best protect the data on a USB flash drive, professionals will always suggest that an encrypted USB flash drive is the best option. If the USB flash drive is lost or stolen, it protects the data on the flash drive from being accessed by someone who does not have the password. You can click here to know more about ISunshare SafeUSB Genius.
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