CODEWITHSUNDEEP
usb-drive
Savas
Savas

Reputation: 77

Creating a program that runs on USB memory

I want to move my program to USB memory stick. It will run only on memory stick and would not be copied (written on C# and has nearly 3GB of database). Where can I find a good source for that and/or how can I do that?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 890

Answers (2)

Filipe YaBa Polido
Filipe YaBa Polido

Reputation: 1674

Allow me to disagree with nmichaels, it is possible to check in C# if your running from removable storage or hard drive.
Check this thread: How to detect if any specific drive is a hard drive?
However, it would be too easy to reverse the thing and allow it to run on hard drives.
As an additional protection, you can read the USB drive serial and if it doesn't match, kill the program.
OR... you if want to be hardcore, use a specific USB drive model, and read the VID/PID, or the chip itself (check mass production tool).
In the end, if the program worths it, someone would still reverse it and break the protection scheme :)

Upvotes: 1

nmichaels
nmichaels

Reputation: 50971

What you described can't reasonably be done. If a user can run the program, they can run it. It doesn't matter whether they loaded it from your USB stick or not. You can write it such that it assumes it's being run from the USB stick (with relative paths, per @Kos's comment) but that will in no way prevent people from copying it to their hard drives and running it. Since you don't know where a USB stick will be mounted ahead of time, you can't even use absolute paths.

Upvotes: 1

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