Care to prevent writing to HDD while using USB Linux?

It's been a LONG time since I've posted, and this question(s) should be easy

I've been recently playing around with a wide variety of Linux distros, just a beginner trying to learn. So I've been creating bootable USBs and running a live Linux desktop from there.

My question is: How safe is this for the O/S on the hard drive? That is, either through carelessness or ignorance, how significant is the risk that one might inadvertently write to / write over files (especially O/S system files) on the HDD? Is it overly-paranoid to remove the HDD as a precaution?

(p.s. google didn't provide any answers, so I'm guessing this is pretty much a non-issue).

Thanks!

 

well linux dont do anything unless you tell him to do

if you want to learn or install linux best use external disk drive creating a small partition and leaving rest for data backup in simple fat/ntfs

in case it messup you dont mess with your original windows and fat/ntfs are readble by both on linux and windows so you can use it as data as well

every OS get messup so if someone say linux dont its a lie best backup

absolutely not you can do that but then you have to edit grub for windows which is easy as well

best thing read and when you ready tell us then we give you babysteps about problems

i recommended you do more reading before start and then ask about things you dont understand then start

please read these all posts

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=314085

specialy gparted ones and tutorial given on mint forums see that its very detailed you get 80-90% idea

also check this site lot of stuff to read before start

http://www.dedoimedo.com/

 

Hi optigrab,

If you issue the mount command as a regular user, you should get confirmation that the Live USB you are using is mounted RO (read only), e.g. the Live USB I am using now is identified from the mount command as:
/dev/sdf on /cdrom type iso9660 (ro,noatime)
even though it is a Live USB and not a CDROM.

You hard drives are not exposed to the Internet from a Live environment where it is confirmed that no hard drives are mounted, unless you mount them and deposit or withdraw information to/from them - and then, of course, unmount (umount command) them afterward in the Live environment.

-- Tom