Hi guys.. I want to d/l programs but many have viruses that can steal personal data like banking and create havoc on my PC. So I was thinking of having a main drive used for personal stuff like banking, paying bills, email, etc. And then a 2nd SSD on a hot swap drive for downloading games to prevent any potential viruses from infecting the main drive.
Let me know what you guys think if this is good idea. Thanks
You can't hot swap faster than a CPU can spread an infection if you should get one.
You need to block the infection "before" it gets IN your computer.
Bet on your Antivirus catching it, cause nothing else is fast enough.
Another option is backup software. In most cases, when run from bootable media, it can "overwrite" an infection.
Well, any infection other than some bootkits.
Just to paint you a picture, I'll be using the main drive for every day stuff including banking with the hot swap drive turned off. When I want to switch drives, I can just disable the main drive and enable to hot swap drive. So both drives will never be enabled at the same time thus preventing any possible contamination.
Let me know what you think.
If you were truly disabling the main drive, what operating system are you using to enable the hot swap drive?
Hot swapping is physically disconnecting one drive and connecting another.
That's why it's called "hot" swapping. It's done while the power is ON.
As far as I know... you can only do that with storage drives.
If you ARE talking about storage drives... then you still have the problem in which the OS drive can pass the infection from one storage drive to the other. Even if both storage drives aren't connected at the same time.
Many folks have tried playing musical chairs with storage drives, to deal with an infection.
Or to prevent an infection from propagating.
It doesn't work. CPUs these days are way too fast.
Viruses, 95% of them, are gonna try to infect every drive you have. And, they're gonna keep trying to do that, no matter how many drives you swap out.
Think like a hacker...
Hacker1: Let's make a virus that infects ALL their drives.
Hacker2: But then, they may swap out their drives for others.
Hacker1: Well then, we'll just have our virus keep trying to infect all other drives... forever.
Hacker2: Ooh, that'll work.
Last edited by Ghot; 01 Feb 2024 at 21:39.
The best I've managed to come up with is to only "physically" hook up only one drive at a time.
I did something similar with my Windows 10 and Windows 11 drives...
But I have to turn the computer OFF, and physically swap the cables on the two Windows drives.
A much easier option is do all your dangerous things on an entirely different computer.
Keep one heavily protected computer just for things like banking, etc.
Don't do anything else on the banking type computer... ever.
But even then... infections can pass from one comp to the other through the router.
On both computers make sure you keep full backups of the Windows drive.
Macrium Reflect, AOMEI Backupper and Hasleo Backup Suite - GUIDES | Windows 11 Forum
I guess to be really safe... have two different ISPs. One for the banking computer, and the other for the dangerous computer. That way, I don't see how an infection could pass from one comp to the other.
The best solution would be... keep good backups and just don't do dangerous things on your computer.
@kwp
If there's a piece of software you want to "test". Ask about it on here.
A lot of the regulars on here have been there done that, for just about everything.
You can also scan any iffy downloads at Virustotal.com
It scans any file (650MB limit), you upload with about 60 antivirus engines.
VirusTotal
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