Vista - protection of mp3 and word text files from deletion

can anyone give me any ideas on how to stop people deleting files unintentionally from my laptop or server at work. I want open access for read and copy only for everyone but i need it to be impossible to overwrite or delete these files. I can give a read only tag ok but can't seem to set a higher security for deletions without running password blocks etc. Are passwords the only method of avoiding deletions?

thanks

Hi dean friend, welcome to the Vista forums.

Are you the administrator of your laptop and server? (type of server?)
Do the people accessing your laptop and server have administrator rights?

I work in an english language teaching company with 15 teachers. We all have company laptops which we use in lessons either in the building or at other companies where we teach.

everyone can connect direct to the server in order to access these files and use them from their laptops as teaching resources.

I have rights to my laptop and i'm the only person to use it (in theory) but everyone has rights to the server. I have been charged with putting MP3 files, videos or word text files on the server where everyone can access them as teaching tools. The problem is, is that I know eventually people will copy files from the server onto thier company laptops to use in the class but occassionaly will cut and paste rather than copy - use and bin. I know i can keep back ups of all tyhe files somewhere and as I said i can have read only, but that doesn't seem to stop deletion (by cut and paste) if you see what i mean.

What i don't want, is people to have to go thru a password everytime they access the server and take things from it. I just don't want them to be able to delete things. Only I want/should have the ability to do that.

as for the type of server - i'm not really sure!!!

Thanks again,

Dean

Hi Dean,

Just buy a USB thumbdrive, then you own the thumbdrive and no one can touch it without your permission

If you are not the administrator of the server there is no way to lock the files.

Steven

great, thanks for your time. I thought as much! long live OZ - what a great country you have!

Your Welcome Dean,

Have you spoken with your Schools Network Administrator about this? It is very easy for him todo what you have asked and He should be helping you protect these files since your School wants them available centrally for all the teachers.

Steven

Hi Dean

I think you can set the server so it doesn't allow remote users to cut & copy files from it's network folder/drive, so they can only download these files and not remove them. It's really like any remote access into a server, like when you access one to download a program from online, you don't have access to remove it, only download or copy it.
It's all in the access rights given for remote users.
I'm not an expert in this area so I can't give you exact details on how to do it but I know it's possible. Whenever you have a server that offers files and the others wanting these files are remote users and not accessing the server directly, it's possible to have only read and copy rights and not any execute or delete rights to the server's shared folder contents.
Your IT guy should easily be able to set that up for you.