Will a 2nd HD Protect My Primary HD from Risky Programs?

yahanna said:

Hi guys.. I'm thinking of downloading programs that a few might be risky to my PC's security. Do you think its wise to add a 2nd hard drive to download these programs to and run them from there instead of my primary hard drive? Would that secure my primary drive from these programs that way?

Very bad plan - it will make no difference at all to reducing security risk.

If you wish to run "risky" programs, do them inside a virtual machine, or in sandbox.

Hello @yahanna,

yahanna said:

I'm thinking of downloading programs that a few might be risky to my PC's security. Do you think its wise to add a 2nd hard drive to download these programs to and run them from there instead of my primary hard drive? Would that secure my primary drive from these programs that way?

Regardless of downloading them and running them from a secondary drive, which natively is NOT the way that programs are written to work, program installations will still write data etc to the Primary drive, especially the Registry. If you download a program to a secondary Drive, when you install it, it will automatically find the OS Drive and install the program there, because it will probably need to use some of the OS System Files in order to work correctly.

What you could do, to see if the programs run without any problems, is to create a System Image prior to installation. That way, if you don't like them, or they cause problems, you can just Restore the image.

What you are intending to do, will have NOT affect on keeping your PC any MORE secure.

If you think the programs are risky, you could look for alternative programs that perform the same thing.

Other than that, I do agree with @cereberus about running them in a Virtual Machine.

I hope this helps.