One popular way of protecting removable drives is by creating a folder or file and renaming it as AUTORUN.INF. It could enable the malware to automatically run on the system even without the users executing it. By creating this file beforehand, ideally, worms would not be able to run in this way.

However, this method is not perfect. Worms can delete the existing AUTORUN.INF file or folder, and then replace it with a malicious version. This would negate any protection placed by the user on the said file. However, by using file permissions to restrict changes, the AUTORUN.INF file can be protected more effectively.

Note: Make sure that your external drive is formatted using NTFS, as this procedure uses a specific feature of NTFS. If your removable drive is formatted using either FAT or FAT32, back up any data on the said drive first and reformat using NTFS. This may require Windows Vista or Windows 7.

• Create a new folder in the root directory of the removable disk and rename it as “AUTORUN.INF.”
• Create four more folders in the same location and named it as “recycle,” “recycler,” “recycled,” and “setup” respectively.
• Open a command prompt (cmd.exe) and go to the root directory of your removable drive.
• Set the folder attributes using the following DOS command: attrib autorun.inf /s /d –a +s +r

• Set the privilege level of the folder using the following DOS command: cacls autorun.inf /c /d administrators

• Select ‘Y’ and press enter when the message, “Are you sure (Y/N)?” is prompted.
  
• To test it, try to delete, modify, rename, copy, or open the created folder. If you cannot perform any of these functions, then the procedure is successful.

In addition to the above procedure, users may also choose to use hardware means of protection. Certain removable drives have an external switch that prevents the device from being written to. This would prevent malware from making any modifications to the drive, including the AUTORUN.INF file. However, as this may prove to be somewhat inconvenient, it is still a good idea to use the procedure shown above.

On non-Home versions of Windows (for example, Windows XP Professional, Vista Ultimate): 

1. Click Start, click Run, enter gpedit.msc (launch Group Policy Editor); 
2. XP users: Open Computer Configuration | Administrative Templates | System, 
Vista users: Open Computer Configuration | Windows Components | AutoPlay Policies; 
3. Find Turn Off AutoPlay in the right-hand pane and double-click it; 
4. Choose Enabled and set it for All drives.

Or, in any Windows version:

1. Launch the Registry editor (Start | Run | regedit); 
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ 
CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer; 
3. Double-click NoDriveTypeAutoRun in the right-hand pane and set its value to hexadecimal FF.

Good Luck and be sure to try this out if you browse the internet a good bit and also use your flash drive with your computer and others! If you have any questions or comments on how to do this feel free to leave a comment and I will be glad to help any way I can in getting you all setup!

Owners of the Barracuda 7200.11 drive can contact Seagate through its support Web site. Seagate also offers support by telephone at 800-SEAGATE (732-4283). The company is offering data recovery services through its i365 data recovery subsidiary. On Friday, Seagate issued a statement saying that a firmware bug has been causing drive failures or freezes affecting not only the Barracuda 7200.11, but also several other models manufactured through December 2008. Those include the DiamondMax 22, the Barracuda ES.2 SATA and the SV35.

The Barracuda 7200.11 is the eleventh generation of Seagate’s flagship drive for desktop PCs and comes in capacities of 160GB to 1.5TB. Seagate manufactures hard disk drives in China, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia. Hall said he didn’t know what percentage of the 7200.11 drives are failing. “The best information we have right now is that it’s a pretty small population of our drives,” he said. “I’d say this is certainly one of the more highly publicized cases.”

Duncan Clarke, managing director atU.K. data recovery firm Retrodata, said he and his colleagues in the data recovery industry believe that failure rates on Seagate’s Barracuda 7200.11 drive are upwards of 30%. “We’ve been aware of this problem since November. I was getting 30 times the number of those drives than any other drive,” he said. Hall said Seagate isn’t seeing anywhere near a 30% failure rate and hasn’t decided whether to issue a recall on the Barracuda 7200.11 drive.” At the moment, we’re really still looking into it,” he said. “It’s an issue that’s ongoing for us at the moment.”

“This is something that crops up now and then,” Hall said. “Obviously, when you release a drive the firmware is refined over time. There are times when the firmware is at a point where there may be some issues that cause these problems that are undetected when the drive ships.” Clarke said he is disturbed that Seagate has not done enough to address the issue.

“First, they’re shipping rubbish products. Second, they’re not taking responsibility for the problem. They actually own a data recovery company that people go to to recover data from these drives, and they charge a lot of money for that,” Clarke said, referring to the period before Seagate began offering free recovery services. “I hope Seagate is taken to the cleaners over this.” Jeff Pederson, manager of operations at data recovery firm, Kroll Ontrack Inc., said his company has received 100 Barracuda 7200.11 drives, 50 in the last two weeks alone. He said that is a 90% increase over what the company would normally see with a Seagate Barracuda-model drive. ”People are getting perturbed with having to deal with the drive,” he said.

As far as Pederson can tell, the firmware issue is coming from Seagate’s Thailand manufacturing facility. “The firmware is corrupted. It doesn’t interface correctly with the drive and causes it to fail. But, it’s failing at the electronics level and not the platter level, so it’s not destroying data,” he said. Kroll Ontrack is offering a free diagnosis and close to a 50% discount for recovery services to owners of the Barracuda drive, which amounts to $850.

Hall said Seagate is still considering whether it will reimburse customers who took failed drives to i365 or other data recovery services before the larger issue came to light. He acknowledged that this isn’t the first time in recent months that a Seagate product has had firmware problems. In November, Seagate’s 2.5-in. SATA drives with firmware Version 7.01 were failing. The drives, which included model numbers ST96812AS and ST98823AS, are commonly used in laptops such as the MacBook or MacBook Pro. Complaints about the drives have not been limited to Seagate’s online support site. Users have also weighed in on other forums. The complaints involve drives running Linux, Mac OS X and Windows Vista

So it seems this is a trend. The question is, why? Kanguru’s answer is that you can have blazing fast data transfer on your home system, then pocket the device and plug it in anywhere using the USB port. Kanguru’s eFlash drive, with its eSATA 3Gbit/sec. throughput, potentially offers five to six times the speed of USB 2.0, which is 480Mbit/sec. The key word here is, potentially.

Dave Bresnick, senior product manager of the Kanguru e-Flash drive, said the drive would realistically offer read speeds of 75MB/sec. compared to USB 2.0′s 30MB/sec. and write speeds of 25MB/sec., up from USB’s 20MB/sec. He wasn’t kidding. Kanguru’s e-Flash drive comes in a 16GB version for $84.95, with the 32GB model selling for $119.95; It’s really not very expensive considering the capacity. The company expects to release a 64GB model in the next three months.

Kanguru’s eSATA flash drive is a nice shape and size, about the same dimensions as a pack of gum, but only half as thick. It also has a sleek black finish. One cool feature is that when transferring data to or from the drive, the eSATA connector emits a red band of light and the USB side glows blue.

The one thing that immediately turned some off about the drive was the end caps covering the eSATA and USB connectors. They found them flimsy, and the eSATA cap has a lanyard protruding through it, which I guess keeps you from losing one of the caps, but also makes it somewhat awkward when trying to plug it into the laptop. Kanguru, however, assured everyone that they are correcting that “design flaw” and will be removing the lanyard from the cap and body and reinforcing the cap as well.

One test of the drive involved transferring a big, ugly 4GB folder consisting of 1,653 files with 85 JPEG photos and a dozen short videos. The data transfer using the eSATA port took 10 minutes, 4 seconds; using the USB port, it took exactly 15 minutes. So with new stuff starting to hit the market like this, all the geeks out there should be getting pretty excited with the possibilities this is going to open up for everyone!