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Prevent a hard drive from being formatted?

Prevent a hard drive from being formatted?

"I have an external hard drive and I partitioned it in 3 partitions. I want do something on one of these partitions, so nobody can format it (its data is important to me).
What should I do?
I use trueCrypt for this partition and encrypted all of the capacity but It still can be formatted."

Asked by: Guest | Views: 231
Total answers/comments: 4
Guest [Entry]

I think what you are asking is impossible to achieve. If a user has admin access to the drive they will always be able to format it. The only way to achieve this is to not allow anyone else physical access to the drive. If someone plugs your drive into their machine they can do whatever they like.
Guest [Entry]

"I encrypted two partitions with TrueCrypt and to prevent formatting I hid the partitions. Here is a good example on how you can do that.


Go to Start > run > type ""diskpart"". A DOS window will appear with following discription.

DISKPART>

Then type ""list volume"" The result will look like :

Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
--------------- --- -------- ---- ------ ---- ------ ----
Volume 0 F CD-ROM
Volume 1 C Window_XP NTFS Partition 7000MB Healthy System
Volume 2 D Softwares NTFS Partition 8000MB Healthy
Volume 3 E Songs NTFS Partition 8000MB Healthy

Suppose u wanna hide drive E then type ""select volume 3"". Then a message will appear in same winwods { Volume 3 is the selectedvolume}
Now type ""remove letter E"". Now a message will come { DiskpartRemoved the Drive letter } sometime it requires the reboot the
computer. Diskpart will remove theletter. Windows XP is not having
capabilty to identify the unkownvolume.Your Data is safe now from all
unauthorised users. To access thecontent of hidden Drive repeat the
process mentioned above. But in4th step replace "" remove"" to ""assign""
i mean type ""assign letter E"""
Guest [Entry]

"I encrypted two partitions with TrueCrypt and to prevent formatting I hid the partitions. Here is a good example on how you can do that.


Go to Start > run > type ""diskpart"". A DOS window will appear with following discription.

DISKPART>

Then type ""list volume"" The result will look like :

Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
--------------- --- -------- ---- ------ ---- ------ ----
Volume 0 F CD-ROM
Volume 1 C Window_XP NTFS Partition 7000MB Healthy System
Volume 2 D Softwares NTFS Partition 8000MB Healthy
Volume 3 E Songs NTFS Partition 8000MB Healthy

Suppose u wanna hide drive E then type ""select volume 3"". Then a message will appear in same winwods { Volume 3 is the selectedvolume}
Now type ""remove letter E"". Now a message will come { DiskpartRemoved the Drive letter } sometime it requires the reboot the
computer. Diskpart will remove theletter. Windows XP is not having
capabilty to identify the unkownvolume.Your Data is safe now from all
unauthorised users. To access thecontent of hidden Drive repeat the
process mentioned above. But in4th step replace "" remove"" to ""assign""
i mean type ""assign letter E"""
Guest [Entry]

"Extreme answer for data protection for IDE drives: cut the write enable line. I don't believe this is possible for SATA though.

However, it sounds like you're going to be handing this drive to people you don't trust not to ruin it. Hardly anyone formats a drive by accident. If you don't trust them, and you need the data, you have to keep your own backups of it."