Hello, I’m trying to set a folder or files on my fat32 flash drive to be read only to avoid accidental deletion by the user on other computers. I can set the files and folder to read only, however, I am still able to delete and modify the files even though it is supposedly read only. Why would this be? This is happening to files set to read only on the flash drive as well as my system hard drive.
Thanks!
Right-click on the USB drive and select the “Properties” option from the drop-down menu. Click on the “Security” tab and select the “Edit” option. Find the section “Write Attributes” and place a check mark next to the “Read-Only” option.
fat32 can’t support those permissions. You can use ntfs but really it is still useless. Anyone could delete it if they wanted.
As you have discovered, the read-only attribute prevents you from changing a file, but not from deleting it. To do that you need to set the appropriate permissions.