protect USB portable

if there is communication with the usb stick, then things go in and out.

Only thing I know is that there are some sticks, with hardware switch, which will tell the build in controller not to write anything to the actual flash chip at all.

But those sticks are somehow rare today, those I have for some special purposes are old and very small.

And ok, then there are all the encryption solutions which will do similar result for the user, but have all the usual problems as need of admin rights etc, or hardware encryption solutions, working for certain controllers only.

Yep, USB WriteProtector.
Works like a charm for me.

What i do is that i operate from 2 flash drives. A 16 gig as my master, and a 4 gig as a stripped down version of the master. So if i happen to catch a virus,all i have to do is reformat the 4 gig,and simply reinstall my programs. Of course i also have a dvd rom of all the programs so if worse come,i can reformat everything and do a clean reinstall.

@atmanactive

if a software running under windows can write something to the stick, then any, other software can do that too.

It does not write anything to boot record or similar, it does use windows function for that, just making changes to file structure frozen. But when the software can modify this, any other software including malware can do it. And the function it is calling up does exist only in more recent versions of windows.

Therefore any other oprating systems, like older windows versions, or linux or mac or what ever can use the stick as usual. There is nothing to prevent it.

So the software can be bypassed any time by anything, and particularly malware will not be impressed by the presence of such utility at all. It doe not matter wheather you plug it in or out or what ever. The function it calling up simply does not exist, so all writing is enabled as before.

The only way to make flash write protected would be to remove the write voltage on the hardware way.

I was similarly worried as none of the decent quality/reliable branded pendrives have any hardware method for write protecting them. The ones that supposedly do are from dicey vendors. So finally I did something different.

I got my self a standard size 16 GB Sandisk SD card which has a genuinely functional write protect sliding tab like on the old time floppy disks. Mind you I have also seen some well known branded SD cards that have these tabs but do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING !!! I use this with a mini sized multi card reader. I am able to boot from this to install say Win 7, Boot various flavours of mini versions of portable Linux distros like DSL, Gparted, Puppy (full ram mode without saving session) and of course Portableapps (without upgrade/update facility). I can't put this on my keychain but security is much higher priority for me than a little inconvenience.