Can I prevent a file from being deleted?

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Pls, what about Special Permissions ?
How can I control it ?
thanks.

Hi, Leo,
I'm wondering: there are programs (some free ones) that will actually hide a file or folder so that anyone looking at your computer doesn't even know it exists. Off the top of my head I can't think of the name of one of those programs, but I'm sure you've heard of them. If a file is hidden, and it requires a special password of its own to unhide it, wouldn't that prevent its deletion – barring the reformatting of the hard drive or the actual physical removal of the machine or drive?

You have to be careful about using apps that promise to hide a file or folder, I know of one that just moves the file to the app's directory and doesn't really hide it at all....easily found using windows explorer. I think the name of the one I'm talking about is "folder lock" I prefer really encryptioning it with trucrypt. With trucrypt you can make a container using any extension like a .dat or .jpg...something no one would expect to be able to read...

Don't forget the ultimate physical threat to data integrity: a big, powerful magnet.

Actually, I've read that what we think of as big magnets turn out to be much less effective than we might think. Surprising, to me anyway, but apparently so.
-Leo

Dave,
I found TruCrypt when I Googled that name, but all the sites pointed to a program called TrueCrypt, so I hope that TrueCrypt was the program about which you were talking. When I went to their web site, it looks like the program is disk encryption software. I didn't see any options for encrypting a single file. Am I not getting the best info from their screenshots? Can you make TrueCrypt hide a file?

Though I don't have to share my computer/laptop with anyone else I use external USB harddrives to keep a good portion of what is on my main drive (C:) In that way I'm more assured of it's safety and security. The external USB hard drives comes in a variety of compact sizes and are reasonable in price. They are transportable on to other computers.

yeah Diana, it's truecrypt....my bad...you can make a truecrypt container as big or as small as you want or need. When mounted it acts just like another hard drive partition.

I've often tried to delete a Windows directory and gotten stopped because of a flash??.ocx (?? stands for 8c or 9b or some other version code). Even from another windows installation or Windows PE CD, it can't be deleted, so I know the file isn't in use. I can't figure out how (or why) Adobe makes it undeletable. It would seem there is some technique that might be useful for protecting other files.

I wanted to put a file(video) in an USB thumbdrive and doesn't want to be deleted. I want it permanently there. I heard from my friend that in order to do this, i must do it in desktop or notebook, can't do it in USB. Once the file became "undeletable" at the computer, we can copy to the USB and the file will be permanently at both computer and USB. Is it true? You have any better way of doing it?
Thanks for your help.

THIS IS LEO'S ANSWER:

"The short answer is no. You can't prevent it."

YOU ARE WRONG!!!
YES YOU CAN PREVENT A FILE FROM BEING DELETED. THERE IS A WAY. THE PROBLEM IS WE DON'T KNOW HOW. TRY PANDA USB VACCINE. IT WILL CREATE AN "AUTORUN" FILE ON YOU FLASHDRIVE WHICH WILL IMMUNIZE IT FROM VIRUSES. YOU KNOW WHAT? ONLY FORMATING YOUR FLASHDRIVE CAN DELETE THAT "AUTORUN" FILE. ALSO BEEN WONDERING HOW THEY DO IT. TRY IT AND YOU'LL BE AMAZED.

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