Protecting removable drives

If your computer has removable drives attached to it (such as CD-ROM, SCSI or ZIP drives, the floppy drive, etc.), you can use Folder Guard to protect access to such drives. For example, if you don't want other users to be able to use your CD-ROM drive, simply assign the no access attribute to it's root folder (just like you would restrict access to any other folder), and that would make the users unable to use the CD-ROM drive:

You can also create an unlocking password for the CD-ROM drive, if you want to be able to unlock the drive while keeping the rest of the restrictions in effect.

Keep in mind, however, that in some cases Windows uses tricks that bypass the CD-ROM drive letter. For example, if you have a rewritable (CD-RW) drive, when you add the files to be written to a CD-R, Windows XP makes it appear as if you are adding the files directly to the CD-RW drive, while in reality it stores such files in a temporary folder on your hard disk (usually it is "C:\Documents and Settings\User\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\CD Burning"). As a result, even if you configure Folder Guard to restrict access to the CD-RW drive, users would still be able to add files to the CD-RW disc. To solve this problem, apply the restrictions directly to the "CD Burning" folder instead of the CD-RW drive.

Note also that there is an alternative way of preventing the users from using the removable drives, using the Permissions - Drives command of Folder Guard.

Protecting subfolders on the removable drives

When you install Folder Guard, it is initially configured so that the removable drives can be protected as a whole. However, Folder Guard offers you an option that lets you protect folders on the removable drives (such as CD-ROM, SCSI or ZIP drives, but not the floppy ones), as well.

To use this option, first make sure the removable disk you would like to protect is inserted into the drive. (Below we refer to this particular disk as the original one, that is the disk that you use when you are setting up the attributes of its folders.) Run Folder Guard, choose the File - Settings command, go to the Protect page, and select the Allow protection of folders on removable drives option. Then choose the File - New command to create a new file to keep the restrictions. Now set up the attributes of folders on the removable disk as desired, in the same way as you would do it for a regular, fixed, drive.

From that time on, whenever the protection is enabled, and the same (original) disk is inserted into the drive, its folders are protected by Folder Guard, as usual. If you insert some other disk into the same drive, however, that has a different structure of folders than the original disk, the folders on such disk will not be protected, unless they happen to have the same paths as the folders on the original disk.

A problem may occur if you run Folder Guard and some other disk (not the original one) is inserted into the removable drive. In such a situation, while reading the restrictions file and not finding the protected folders on the disk, Folder Guard assumes that you might have renamed or moved the folders and prompts you to specify their new locations. To deal with this problem, when the first such prompt appears on the screen, remove the wrong disk from the drive, and insert the original disk into the drive instead. Then press the OK button on the prompt, to let Folder Guard continue reading the file. At the end of the initializing, use the View - Refresh command (or simply press F5) to force Folder Guard to re-initialize its information, this time using the correct, original disk.

Will the removable disk be protected on other computers, too?

No! The protection of Folder Guard is effective only on your computer, where Folder Guard is installed and configured accordingly. If you configure Folder Guard to protect access to a removable disk, the access will be protected on your computer only. If you take the disk to some other computer (without Folder Guard installed on it), the access to the disk will NOT be protected. If you need the disk to be protected on any computer, use encryption software to protect the information stored on the disk.