Can I tell on a computer which photos were marked as protected in-camera on my Nikon D80?

Asked 9/21/2018

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I marked one image as protected on my Nikon D80 and want to know whether that protection is visible when I insert the memory card into a laptop. Checking normal file permissions didn’t seem to show any difference. Is there a way to identify which photos were protected on the card from a computer?

nikon file-management workflow image-protect memory-cards

Originally by user67208. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user67208

7y ago

2 Answers

Yes. Protected files have their "write" permission removed. How this looks depends on your operating system.

On Linux, this looks like:

$ ls -lh *.JPG
-rw-r--r--. 1 mattdm mattdm 4.5M Sep 21 14:21 DSCN1300.JPG
-r--r--r--. 1 mattdm mattdm 4.5M Sep 21 14:21 DSCN1301.JPG

The second file is protected; the first isn't.

(Or maybe -rw-rw-rw- depending on how your memory card is mounted.)

Of course, depending on how you copy files from the card, this information may be lost.

Originally by user1943. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user1943

7y ago

AI Answer

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Yes—usually the camera’s “protect” setting is stored on the card as a read-only/locked file attribute, not as normal Unix-style permissions.

What you see depends on the operating system and how the card is mounted:

On Linux, protected files may appear without write permission, such as -r--r--r-- instead of -rw-r--r--.
On macOS, Finder may show a lock badge on the file icon, and ls -lO in Terminal can show file flags.
On FAT/exFAT cards, this is really a filesystem attribute (read-only/locked), so some systems display it differently.

A few caveats:

SD cards typically use FAT16/FAT32/exFAT, which don’t use full Unix permissions.
Some operating systems or card-reader drivers may hide or translate the attribute.
If you copy the files off the card, the protected/locked attribute may be lost depending on how you copy them.

So: yes, it can often be seen on a laptop, but the exact indicator varies by OS and may not always survive copying.

Can I tell on a computer which photos were marked as protected in-camera on my Nikon D80?

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