how to limit or disable external USB drive connect to Mac

[Hevel]

Hi guy s

I need help in this issue that I am having at the moment , I have a Mac pc at home , the pc runs perfectly fine but there is something that I need help on , i s it possible to stop the external USB drive to connect to my Mac machine or is it possible to limit the size , I mean only the particular size of USB drive can be able to connect the System , say up to or less than 4 GB . I am asking this because I have a zip file of 5.5 GB in the System that is very important and I don’t want someone to have it. So is there any one here know anything about this can help me , as I have looked everywhere for this but not able to find any answer to this so it will be really very nice if someone form here can able to help me , I will be really appreciating this

Thanks in advance

[Clarice]

Then thing that you are looking for is not possible practically , even it will be possible in some cases that I really doubt about , but that might include lot of work and there will be no guarantee that it will be 100% working . in case this help try to connect it to the LDAP server that runs on the Mac OS X Server may be that can help you but again that will be the long shot and there will be no guarantee that it will 100 % going to work . the fact that the operating system like MAC as well as the windows are built in such a way that it will make stuff easy for the user , that actually not meant that it will allow the administrator to lock the thing down. So my guess will be no this Is not possible at the moment .. but I may be wrong . in case you get the solution to this, please post back here I am curious to know about it.

[Evoldo]

Well I like to suggest that you remove the kernel extension com.apple.iokit.IOUSBMassStorageClass form the maching , that will disable the all USB-based Mass-Storage devices which in clued the -sticks, USB-hard drives, few cameras stuff like that but then someone might come with the a firewire drive or try to reload the missing kext in that case this won’t help. Although like to warn about this technique the fact that removing the kernel extensions is should not be done but the someone with no experience as that have some potential that can rendering your system totally out of use . now I am not tell that this will not work , that is another case just that one do not do it until you up to the task. I well suggest that you should find the way to block storage devices is the most excellent that be able to be complete, except you are able of writing your own device driver. I am not sure if there will be any third party application available like in the windows which control the USB drive, may be that can help you cause or you can try this , start the terminal and run this code

cp /System/Library/Extensions/IOUSBMassStorageClass.kext ~/backup/
sudo srm -rf /System/Library/Extensions/IOUSBMassStorageClass.kext
sudo touch /System/Library/Extensions
sudo reboot

this will disable USB storage, it will no more mounting, this method is working on the Mac OS X 10.6 but you need to do this again in case you done any software update

[Baako]

Not that this is not possible but the fact the Mac OS X is made on the bases of Unix, and without getting into great detail because it will be very considerably more challenging to write the third party application for doing something like this. I mean it is possible to make an application that can block the USB drive , may be there will be app like that but making the app that do the selective blocking like in your case exceeding 4GB is totally different ask . I am not sure that this can be done on effectively on a device independent OS. Hope you can understand what I want to say here . it is hard make system to recognize the USB specific to their Brand or in your case the size .

[Kevalkumar]

What you have said is absolutely correct. Well I not build the application so can’t comment on that much , may be there a better way to this but at the moment the only way that I can suggest is be perpetually polling every USB, FireWire, as well as Thunderbolt ports then checking not just for the presence of a USB device, although subsequently also the size of the device. This will make a enormous amount of operating cost and actually corrupt performance of few USB/FireWire/Thunderbolt device. It will as well need to be run as a root process, or else as a user with right of hardware devices, which can then create the massive security threat. Or in fact, if I am not wrong in this aspect then There possibly will, and I like to say that this may or may not be a way to play with the auto-mounted in OS X. I think that the Apple wrote their own, for the reason that they were doing auto-mounting of US devices long before almost anybody besides did . So, if it's a fraction of the Darwin source repository, you be able to supposedly appoint a programmer to change it to suit your requirements, as far as I know the Darwin is open source. However I'm actually not known with the automounter and may or may be not it have the configuration choice. It most likely do not have the alternative , except it is at least a possible place to begin search as there some a small opportunity the functionality you need may be exists previously in the OS if you're willing to dig deep into the Unix layer. And in case there is any application that can do this for the windows the it will be better that you should visit their respective web site and see if they have the MAC version available there or see if you find any application such that in on the Google , all you have to do is write the name of the app and Mac and see if Google give some result