[amitk26]

Originally Posted by vivekiny2k

I have a suggestion for you.

4. Encrypt the whole drive that runs your game. so when you boot into the other drive, even if it's attacked by a virus, your gaming drive is safe. "truecrypt" will let you decrypt the drive at the time of boot. not sure if it will slow down your system though.

Is there any other way to hide a partition so it is unaffected when you are booted on the internet partition?

my external drive is encrypted too, used only for backups and to anybody else it will look like an unformatted disk.

5. in case something really breaks your system, just reload the image backup. should take less than 30 mins. Or do it regularly anyway.

as far as antivirus is considered, I run the freeware (antivir avira).

Few points

1. encryption will work for data as in documents , videos , pictures but I guess not on games as game is an application ( except the data part which game app need to access un-encrypted _

2. even if somehow games work with encrypted game data the performance will suffer.

3. Encryption can not prevent a virus attack , It can just prevent unauthenticated access to your data , but if your system is infected with any kind of malware it will spread to other area.

4. if you really want to hide the partition from unintended write access there are better ways out there.

A Easiest way.

Create an Admin user and another user with out Admin rights in windows and assign your protected data to Admin and provide RW permission only to admin. Give read only acess to other non admin user.

While surfing use the non admin login.


B. The Ugly way
----------------
Take a backup of partition table when you have a C: with 20 GB and rest of the disk as unused partition ( Lets Call Part_image1 )
Now create partitions and write data and again take a backup of the partition table ( part_image2) and overwrite the partition table with part_image1 so that Windows will show the partition as available free space. Whenever you want to use the partition write back your partition table with part_image2.

Usually partition management tools are costly and quite restrictive so Open Source tools are better , Even you don't need to learn the tool just use a
Ubuntu install CD

One word of Caution : Do not do this if you really don't understand how disk partition works also do not create a new partition before you restore the partition table.

C. Neat way of making partition un-accessible

1. make a C: partition of 20 GB and Install windows.
2. Take a Ubuntu live CD and install Ubuntu
3. Here create a different linux partition at the time of install and format using ext3 filesystem ( if you are using Ubuntu 9 then ext4 is fastest but there is no windows driver for it still)


4. After Installation of Linux is Over , Boot machine in windows and install LTOOLS to acess partitions formatted in ext3, Use this ext3 for storing data
Accessing Linux Filesystems in Windows

Once you start using Ubuntu for net surfing and other tasks your windows usage will become less with each passing day and finally may be over period of 2 weeks you will say bye bye to Win and use it only for occasional usage such as gaming.

Acessing NTFS and FAT16 , FAT32 in Linux is no big issue Linux supports windows partitions

[vivekiny2k]

Originally Posted by amitk26

1. encryption will work for data as in documents , videos , pictures but I guess not on games as game is an application ( except the data part which game app need to access un-encrypted _
.
.
3. Encryption can not prevent a virus attack , It can just prevent unauthenticated access to your data , but if your system is infected with any kind of malware it will spread to other area.

are you saying a malware can spread to an area which looks like unformatted raw partition? how does it read or write itself to it?

and I meant encrypt the whole partition, including the OS and program files. not just data.

about linux, been there, done that, came back to windows. every body praises linux but they raise their hands when I ask them how to install my touch screen on tablet, or inbuilt webcam or many other such things. Linux may work for a barebone internet browsing but for a user with sophisticated needs it's difficult. not to mention need to work corporate network and software.

[amitk26]

Originally Posted by vivekiny2k

are you saying a malware can spread to an area which looks like unformatted raw partition? how does it read or write itself to it?

and I meant encrypt the whole partition, including the OS and program files. not just data.

Unformatted raw partition and encrypted partition are two different things.

Most of the time viruses infect boot table and partition tabel and if your partition table is corrupted then you will no longer be able to acess your encrypted partition.


From your description it looks that you intend to use encrypted partition as a protection against worms ( as against virus infecting boot and partition tables)

But even for a moment lets assume that the said malware has no capability to overwrite anything which does not look like FAT16/FAT32/NTFS then also the data is at risk.

Think of it like this when you have a virus infecting your PC it is a resident program in your RAM. So at any point whenever you will unencrypt and use the partition and do any operation on it a worm and virus present in memory will spread with each operation on file access depending how the perticular malware is written.

Originally Posted by vivekiny2k

about linux, been there, done that, came back to windows. every body praises linux but they raise their hands when I ask them how to install my touch screen on tablet, or inbuilt webcam or many other such things. Linux may work for a barebone internet browsing but for a user with sophisticated needs it's difficult. not to mention need to work corporate network and software.

I beg to differ here , If you are looking at where the high end server market is shifting the above does not make sense one of the biggest supported of Linux these days is IBM also networking equipments , firewalls etc are rarely windows based due to that 4 GB RAM / per app limitation on Windows server versions.

For consumer market embedded devices are already ruled by Linux ( keeping RTOS aside) check what is inside palm pre and countless of Motorola phones.

The trouble is only for ordinary users buying laptops because manufacturers do not support them with drivers but there are solutions for webcams, tablets etc. And ging by trends this manufacturer non support is going to change very soon just like webcam nonsupport changed 2 year ago with V4L release.

I do not intend to take more space on this Linux advocacy here as this is a car forum.

[lohithrao]

Originally Posted by funda2max

Try Kaspersky Internet security. It is very good and wallet friendly. I got 3 user license pack for Rs 650/- in a store. It is the best AV in terms of detection and resources.

Thanks Funda,

Presntly am running "Zone alarm Internet security" but am impressed with what "ZL exterm has to offer" though have not tried it.

So "Zone alarm Extreme security" is it worth the money?

[Sudipto-S-Team]

I have worked out a simple solution for computer virus - I bought a Mac. More than three years. Average 5/6 hours surfing all sorts of sites in the world. Touchwood no virus so far.

[Ashpillai]

Originally Posted by Sudipto-S-Team

I have worked out a simple solution for computer virus - I bought a Mac. More than three years. Average 5/6 hours surfing all sorts of sites in the world. Touchwood no virus so far.

It is well known that most malware is windows directed but even then it is amazing that you have remained clean for 3 years!!

Is it all attributable to the OS only or are you using any third party protection software too???

[wildon]

is this the same we are discussing?
http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/gadget...o-you-use.html

[Rudra Sen]

Same topic is here. Please continue with your discussions there. Thanks wildon.

Thread closed.