Antibodies .

K

Kevin the grey

Joined
Aug 26, 2005
Messages
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First off please excuse my poor medical analogies . A doctor I am not .

The virus . Pestilence of the internet it will one day infect us all . Striking at our heart if not our spirit. Oh Ho No says we. We must build up a resistance . We will produce antibodies.

Along comes a spate of antiviral software . Each more deadly than the last . Seeking out and destroying the debilitating filth allowed to enter into our domain through a lack of dilligent watchfulness .

Can we fight in another way ? could we have two hard drives ? physically , electronicaly and purposely separate from each other ? Keep one drive as our operating sytem and a separate drive as our data/memory bank ?

This may be an immature incomplete way of describing what I want . Let us make the analogy of a banks cashbox . Money is kept on hand to serve the customers needs . The rest ,the bulk of the wealth is slipped into a cashbox orifice . This is not available to the bank teller under normal circumstance .

Only when requested in a specific way and under the careful scrutiny of the cashbox teller can this currency be accessed . This method allows the cashbox teller to be free of duress caused by the threat of harm . So what if Mr. bank teller gets his head blown off .
Strict bank policy controls the cashbox tellers actions . Heck says Mr. Banker .
I can always get a new bank teller . Money is hard to come by .

Can there be a way to isolate the second drive so as to accomplish this ?
If the main hard drive becomes infected(and even when its not) it can be formatted to eradicate said thief .

I know this turns a blind eye to the standard procedure of backup disks . I don,t gave a burner. I do have a second drive installed to increase memory .
It is set up as data storage with my C: drive as the operating system .

I do have most of my data on a backup c:d: burned on a friends computer . I add to data daily . Sometimes in prodigious amounts .

What say thee my masters of the bit ? Has my fruitful imagination caused me to byte off more than I can chew ?

I also have another idea. As you are proabably sitting gagafied (technical term) at my preposterous ponderings I will save my proposal for another time. .
 
Linux has long had a way of protecting the user from the scourge of computer viruses, etc. It's called a live cd. In a nutshell, you download an ISO image of a cd from the net ( you can buy one, too, but why bother?) burn it, and boot your computer from the cd. These cd's come in various flavors, and with various sets of programs, depending on your tastes. The beauty, and the safety comes from the fact that the entire OS is on the CD. If your computer memory gets "infected," you just reboot, and you're running on a clean system again. If you want to save data, you can burn it onto a CD or save it into some form of mass storage device via the usb port. And the real beauty is that if/ when you find a newer/better/more advanced/more user friendly distro, you can simply download the ISO, burn it, and viola! you have a whole new/upgraded OS for the price of burning a CD.

James
 
I use a linux distro called Ubuntu, its easy to learn for beginners and still fun to use for more experienced users.
 
Ubuntu is nice but IMHO, the absolute best for new (and lazy) useris is MEPIS, aka SimplyMEPIS. Boot the CD, and you have an unbelievably stable, powerful, upgradable, and fun desktop OS. Want to install it? There's a program for that, too.

James
 
My friend has a linux c:d: run system . He wanted me to try it . My question is . How would you read ,play or burn a c:d: if your c:d: unit is already being used ?
 
Kevin the grey said:
My friend has a linux c:d: run system . He wanted me to try it . My question is . How would you read ,play or burn a c:d: if your c:d: unit is already being used ?
Click to expand...

That could be a problem, depending on the distribution. Some of them are small enough that the whole CD gets copied into memory at boot, whereupon the CD can be removed. An excellent choice that will do that is SLAX. The whole thing will fit on one of the little 200MB CDs. There are others, too. Puppy, Damn Small Linux (DSL), and Asturmi are three Live CD distros that take up only 50 MB of CD space. Puppy has the added advantage that it can burn changes, saved work, etc. back onto a multisession CD.

I always carry a business card CD in my wallet.I love to go into computer stores, boot as many computers from the CD as can without being seen, and then discreetly watch the fun when the workers discover
that the machines are running on a system that they have no idea about/ isn't running their demos/ads. The beauty of it is that after they give up and reboot the machine (which had been running linux solely from memory (at boot the entire OS of this type CD is copied to memory) it boots back into their Windoze system. And they are left scratching their heads wondering what the hell happened.

I also introduced this type of CD to a friend whose boss had the bad habit of snooping through is e-mails while he wasn't in the office. I showed him how to boot the CD, do his business, save his e-mails to his usb drive, and turn off the computer when he left the office, leaving no traces for his nosey boss to sniff around.

James
 
Yes, use a second physical drive. Viruses and malware will be in C:\windows\system. You only back up your important data to D: drive, e-mails, documents, address book, favourites etc. Also if you load your programs to D: drive it keeps C: uncluttered and things like defragmenting are quicker.

An external hard drive enclosure connected via USB is a good third backup. I have one of those too.
 
Andrew Taylor said:
Yes, use a second physical drive. Viruses and malware will be in C:\windows\system. You only back up your important data to D: drive, e-mails, documents, address book, favourites etc. Also if you load your programs to D: drive it keeps C: uncluttered and things like defragmenting are quicker.

An external hard drive enclosure connected via USB is a good third backup. I have one of those too.
Click to expand...

Andrew You get the idea of what I was trying to say . I am not sure if I Get more than the jist of your suggestion . Are you proposing I put programs on D: my second hard drive ? It is a small drive . I wished to keep it clear of all but memory of data I wish to keep in the event of having to format C:

What I would like is for a virus that infects C: to not be able to migrate to D:.

Gosh all that blather I posted condensed into one sentence . :o

As far as an external hard drive on my U:S:B: port ? "Great minds think alike." I was thinking of a one Gig flash memory . I know that is not exactly what you had in mind . If I can find an external hard drive cheaper I could go that route .

The question still arises . How do I isolate the secondary drive/s from the infected operating drive?
 
Kevin the grey said:
Andrew You get the idea of what I was trying to say . I am not sure if I Get more than the jist of your suggestion . Are you proposing I put programs on D: my second hard drive ? It is a small drive . I wished to keep it clear of all but memory of data I wish to keep in the event of having to format C:

What I would like is for a virus that infects C: to not be able to migrate to D:.

Gosh all that blather I posted condensed into one sentence . :o

As far as an external hard drive on my U:S:B: port ? "Great minds think alike." I was thinking of a one Gig flash memory . I know that is not exactly what you had in mind . If I can find an external hard drive cheaper I could go that route .

The question still arises . How do I isolate the secondary drive/s from the infected operating drive?
Click to expand...

I an ideal world you would only have the operating system (Windows XP) on C: drive, your programs on D: drive and your saved data on E: drive. In that ideal world, if your OS drive was infected it wouldn't take long to reformat and get to where you were. It also makes the Operating system fly, because it isn't cluttered. Your programs on D: drive would still need re-installing as the Windows Registry is on C: drive and that is where the info pertaining to the programs on D: are located. If you keep your data on E: then that is safe whatever happens.

If a virus attacks C:, it can't transfer over to/and hurt D: or E: Viruses will only affect the C: partition.

It matters not if D: is a separate drive or or a partition on the main drive, unless of course the physical hard drive becomes faulty. But you would have backups anyway wouldn't you?

A 1 gig pen drive is OK, but I prefer a 300 GB Western Digital hard drive in a powered enclosure. I can back up images of all three of my computers in about 40 minutes.
 
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