Enable and Disable USB drive

[Koldov]

Bit of a strange one and probably quite a rare scenario but...

 

As well as a cloud back-up, we run a rotating USB set of disks for offline backups (basically important stuff like SIMS database and SLT drives to the cloud and staff data to USB).

 

It is running via WSB on 2012R2 and I found a way to disable the USB on a scheduled tasks (the scheduled task calls 'Devcon.exe' and the argument is enable or disable *VID_XXXX*. , worked fine for a couple of years... but now this seems to have stopped working and I'm at a loss to find out why.

 

The scheduled task runs, so no answers there and nothing shows in Event Viewer as an error...

 

It also seems to be running as when I eject and swap the disks it doesn't appear (so I know it has been disabled) then it must enable the device (via scheduled task) at the correct time because the back-up does run...

 

It just fails to disable the disk afterwards (therefore making susceptible to virus/malware encryption). Maybe the disk is going to 'sleep' or the USB settings (eject/safe remove/disk caching) are wrong somehow, but I don't think I've changed any setting for that recently.

 

Also if anyone has a reliable (easy & free) way to accomplish the same thing, I'm listening.

[Ratcliffepg]

We do this with our AV solution, basically block all usb devices.... and then allow what is still needed....