How Do I Prevent Files In Usb From Being Copied Or Deleted Using C#.

Kailash Sahu 141

I want to develop an windows application which restrict users to copy media files from USB (be it mp3,mp4, etc.) based on password protection. user can only play media files and can't copy or delete. please suggest me some solution with example if possible...

Jack J Jun 24,296 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor

2021-11-04T05:52:00.107+00:00

@Kailash Sahu , Based on my research, I think the possible way is that we need to start with the permission side. You could refer to the link Set File Permissions in C# to use c# code to set permission for the files in usb.
After setting it, we could check it as the following:
RLWA32 40,651 Reputation points

2021-11-04T10:01:47.697+00:00

A drive connected through USB could be a flash drive with a file system other than NTFS. Furthermore, the Windows access control model is based on user identity, not on applications. So it cannot reasonably be used to differentiate between opening a media file to play it with a particular program or opening it with a different program to copy it. Both actions require read access.

Adding the Everyone group to the security descriptor of a file with a Deny Ace for all privileges is not a very good idea. Windows issued the following warning for such an action -

The following illustrates how even the SYSTEM account was denied access if the file system permissions were changed as suggested -
Kailash Sahu 141 Reputation points

2021-11-09T22:07:55.723+00:00

I want to copy my data from PC to pendrive, once data is copy on my pendrive,
Everyone can't delete my data on every PC
Kailash Sahu 141 Reputation points

2021-11-09T22:08:49.697+00:00

I want to copy my data from PC to pendrive, once data is copy on my pendrive,
Everyone can't delete my data on every PC.
Jack J Jun 24,296 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor

2021-11-11T07:09:04.937+00:00

@Kailash Sahu , I suggest that you can set a shared folder for everyone and put the data in the shared folder. Then you can set only the read permission for everybody and set all permissions for you.
RLWA32 40,651 Reputation points

2021-11-11T13:39:40.603+00:00

Do you want to restrict access to the files on the USB pendrive? If so, what file system does it use?
Deleted

This comment has been deleted due to a violation of our Code of Conduct. The comment was manually reported or identified through automated detection before action was taken. Please refer to our Code of Conduct for more information.

2 answers

Bruce (SqlWork.com) 56,686 Reputation points

2021-11-04T14:48:59.65+00:00

As suggested, you can not prevent copying usb files unless you create your own usb file format. You do this by using a raw read/write usb library. In this case you will also need to supply you own player because standard players can not read the files.

The other more common approach is to encrypt the files with DRM. If you can stream rather than use usb look at

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/media-services/latest/drm-content-protection-concept
Please sign in to rate this answer.
Kailash Sahu 141 Reputation points

2021-11-09T22:09:02.157+00:00

I want to copy my data from PC to pendrive, once data is copy on my pendrive,
Everyone can't delete my data on every PC..
Sign in to comment
Deleted

This answer has been deleted due to a violation of our Code of Conduct. The answer was manually reported or identified through automated detection before action was taken. Please refer to our Code of Conduct for more information.

Comments have been turned off. Learn more