Portable USB WriteProtector is a free utility that lets you protect your USB drives with a few clicks by preventing anything from being written in them.
Installation & Requirements
There is no installation for the application. Download the files, extract them in a location of your choice, run the executable file and you are good to go. The supported operating systems are Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or 3, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8 (32 and 64 bit).
Interface
There is only a single small window for the whole application and two options. You can either turn the USB writing protection on or turn it off. Information about how the program works can be found in the Read Me text file that comes with the application. The only other thing you can change in the program is the language and there is quite the variety of them. The application supports all kinds of USB drives, meaning it supports the small USB Flash drives and even external hard disk drives that connect through USB.
When you turn the writing protection on, any USB drives that are currently connected to your computer are actually not affected at all. The same goes when turning the protection off. Only the USB drives that you insert to your computer after you enable or disable the protection are affected so you have the option of keeping some drives that you still want to be writeable in your system. So if you have turned the writing protection on and then inserted a USB drive it will do nothing. The drive will still be writing protected unless you remove it and insert it again. The good thing is that you can enable the protection and then close the program and the protection will stay. You do not even need to keep the program if you do not want to.
This way you can also protect all your files by preventing them from ever leaving your computer. If someone wants to insert a drive in order to take some data from you then he is simply prevented by the application. When you try to move files to a USB drive from your system, a window will pop up informing you that the drive is writing-protected and that you either need to disable the protection or find another drive to use. If you do not have the program though you cannot change the protection mode so only you can change the properties.
Pros
-No installation and a small file size
-A lot of supported languages
-Extremely easy to use with just a few clicks and two options
-Immediate protection with no extra requirements and waiting time
Cons
-The application could benefit from some more options but otherwise works as advertised
Conclusion
Portable USB WriteProtector does exactly what the name would suggest. Since it requires no installation, you can quickly download the files and protect your USB drives and your data with a few simple steps so I would heartily recommend it for its simplicity and ease of use.
