[Nac-Thor]

Thanks in advance for any answers or direction to this situation.

What I am trying to accomplish is this: My cd's (mp3's) are on an external hard drive that hooks to my laptop. I am looking for a way to protect the files from being moved, copied or deleted. Of course I want to have access to all the folders, but not anyone else.

I have looked into password protection programs to hide the folders, but then the user (kids etc.) can not see the files (the media player can not see the files). If I remember correctly, I could put them in the "shared" folder so other users can use them (read only type) but the problem there is that the files (80% of them) are on a usb external hard drive.

Is there a way to protect these files, on internal and external drives, but be able to have the media player read them?

Thanks

OS: winxp, sp2

If there is a thread with this information, I have not found it, please leave link.

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Hello there

well the easiest was is to create a profile for your other users, when you are logged in as you, right click on the folder/drive and options, go to the security tab and give other users read and read and excute permissions so they could play these files if you wish but they can't write or copy or delete any of the files within that drive/folder.
But be sure to apply permissions to subdirectories within that folder/drive.

permissions is the easiest way to control access to personal files.

Hope that helps please ask if there is anything unclear.

[samiko]

Hello there

well the easiest was is to create a profile for your other users, when you are logged in as you, right click on the folder/drive and options, go to the security tab and give other users read and read and excute permissions so they could play these files if you wish but they can't write or copy or delete any of the files within that drive/folder.
But be sure to apply permissions to subdirectories within that folder/drive.

permissions is the easiest way to control access to personal files.

Hope that helps please ask if there is anything unclear.

[Nac-Thor]

hey thanks for the reply,

i will try that, i will have to do it tonight or tomorrow, i am walking out the door.

The remaining question is, if i do that to the folders on the external drive (usb), will that protect the files, if lets say the kids buddy comes over and connects the drive to his computer to try to copy songs etc. Does that share security feature protect external hard drives or not ?

Thanks once again, I will try this and let you know the results.