Running media monkey with no HD writing at all (read only)?

[windcrest77]

Is it possible to run MM3 in a mode where no writing to the song files (on external drives) is done in any way shape or form? This especially includes things like "last payed date", etc. Even if I tried to do an update like reset a rating, where it would refuse to write? (note the MM DB will be on the computer drive, thats ok to write, I'm talking about the songs on external drives).

I am changing my DJ rig to use all solid state hard drives (yes I know it will be expensive, blah blah blah)... The reason being is the reliability of SS over magnetic and better access speed, and mostly the better ruggedness in a portable rig that is likly to get bounced around, etc. I have lost hard drives due to wear and abuse on 3 occasions now and I am sick and tired of it, luckily it did not happen on a gig but still involved many sleepless nights recoving backups. As the price of SS HDD's come down I want to switch. But I will continue to backup even with SS but by replicating filled drives to spares.

So once I establish a segment of my library (by filling up a given SS drive) I want it to be locked down from any possible write access from MM (or any other player for that matter). I actually want these filled drives to be frozen in time, with no writing so they always match exactly their clone backup.

So can MM run in an absolute pure read-only mode but still not give me a deprived UI?

Can I accomplish this by simply setting the security at the root level of the drive to be read only for the account I use to gig with?

Magnetic media is simply proving to be way too unreliable and I would rather have redundant SS drives stored in two locations (car and rig) for even greater safety than RAID magnetic and instantaneous recovery by simply plugging in the backup SS drive I go get from my trunk. BUT I need the redundant drives to stay identical so I dont want MM to do any writing at all over time on my completed and filled drives so the rig image stays put in every way.

Thanks

[Lowlander]

Yes, I'm currently running one PC with read-only access to the music files and there are no issues.

[windcrest77]

Yes, I'm currently running one PC with read-only access to the music files and there are no issues.

Yes it does work, but its not apparent unless you run a test and check the last modified time on the files. Because the property changes still get saved to MM DB but dont get captured in the media tags. Which is fine, this is the good behavior. As a test I copied a bunch of stuff to a second hard drive, scanned it in, then added a special permission to the root folder that denies all forms of write access, set it to inherit to all the contents. Then I updated some ratings and yes my files dont get changed.

Its nice that MM is ignoring permissions access errors it encounters when it goes to update the tags. But in a future release of MM it would be nice if songs that have write access denied errors maybe show up with a little icon on the grid row indicating that your last attempted update to that song wont be replicated in the media file just the DB. This way people that want their files read only would have the confidence in knowing that they are indeed read only, and people that dont want them read only would see immediately what files are not able to have their tags updated.

Now I can just log on with two accounts one for full control and another that wont change my files. I did my test with the everyone account, but the effect should be the same if I create a read only account, I'm the only one on this machine.

Better than the icon above or having to set permissions at all would be to have a checkbox in the MM options that simply let someone turn on/off all media file modification updating globally (or even a tree to set this property by folder). Then MM can be instructed to not allow any file/folder write IO to occur in that level, this includes tags, moving files, renaming, everything. Then you could run MM in read only mode whenever you plug in a certain hard drive that you dont want written to just by checkmarking the root to be read only. Inheritance would be assumed. And people would not have to mess with permissions and accounts.

[Lowlander]

Tools > Options > Tags & Playlists and disable Update tags when editing Properties.

[windcrest77]

Tools > Options > Tags & Playlists and disable Update tags when editing Properties.

Thats great! I didnt know that was there. That will protect the files. Permissions can still be helpful to prevent auto organizing and images and files from being renamed, deleted, moved, added, etc.

[windcrest77]

Tools > Options > Tags & Playlists and disable Update tags when editing Properties.

I miss the old "read only" switch on floppy disks that you could just flip to protect the whole thing. I wish hard drives had something that easy.

[windcrest77]

Tools > Options > Tags & Playlists and disable Update tags when editing Properties.

OK I think I found another alternative procedure to mount a read only drive on a system.

I created a share of the drive, then I set the permissions of the share to "Read" by unchecking the "Change" checkbox leaving only Read.

Then all I have to do is make sure I access the drive via the UNC path and not the physical drive letter. So instead of "I:" I would use "\\bedroom4\I", since the share is read only I have effectively maunted the whole drive as a read only drive. Unfortunately Windows is one of the few operating systems that does not let you mount a physical drive as read only. But this work around seems to be a better approach because it is so much simpler and less dangerous that the security permissions route. Setting read only flags on all the files and folders is silly too because if you add a file or folder it will be writeable and read only attributes can be modified by anyone.

MM seems to be OK with UNC paths, is it? At least the file monitor let me add it. I would have to clear my library to try it from scratch.

But do you think this method will work with MM to prevent all possible modifications like renames, file moves, new files, deletes, as well as tag updates, etc.???

But then again I'm not sure how this will work when I'm off the network, can I still create a share if offline?

[Lowlander]

I added a note about logging failures to write tags: http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view. ... 774#c27274

[luis16]

Hi,

What is MM3?

Thanks "Lowlander" for sharing your link.

[Lowlander]

What is MM3?

MediaMonkey 3