I hope this is in the right place.

First of all, I am an experienced computer user and builder who has never created a database.

What I want to do is create a database on the equipment I work on in my area in work. This is a lot of small items of electric equipment spread over a 30 mile radius.

I would like to type in the item number for the equipment. Then this would bring up a summary of where it is, and the diagrams etc....

Also I would like to store this on removable media such as a DVD or USB drive.

And I would like to protect it from being altered by anyone except myself and maybe 1 or 2 people.

I hope someone out there can help.

Cheers!

Then you haven't really LIVED, man!
Seriously, MS Access would be fine to get you started.

Are we talking pictures illustrating where a component is or something more abstract like Windows' Device Manager?

Okay, 1 or 2 users will work pretty well with Access or some other file-based DBMS. You'll want to have every computer you use it on have the same version.

I haven't tried an Access database on a read-only volume. But you could certainly use a DVD-RAM. If you store it on a DVD-RAM or a USB drive, you'll still want to make backups.

Encryption-wise: if there are only 1 or 2 users, it's best to use encryption like TrueCrypt. Access, for example, doesn't have very good built-in encryption. It's either usable but weak (the whole-database password) or strong but unusable (the security wizard thing.) And you can easily design a database that works fine when it's not encrypted but breaks when it is.

How would the other people access the database if you have the USB drive in your pocket?

Could you just use a web based spreadsheet like Google Spreadsheets. This will only provide spreadsheet style functionality but you can allow multiple named users to update the sheet. Using this you could either access the spreadsheet via the web or download it at the start of the day and, of course, none of this would require any development on your part. You could probably access all the information via a suitable mobile phone with web access.

Mike

Note - I haven't tried the spreadsheets but I have tried their Google Documents and these work well but only if your requirements fall within their feature set.