Reinstalling XP, having two Hard Drives

Got tired of staying in the malware forum all the time, so I thought I would
get out and get some fresh air, looking around on the other forums!

I have two hd drives 40 giga & 80 giga!

I'm thinking about formatting the two hd-d's but not at the same time,
I want to keep a whole bunch of stuff, mostly doc's pict's mov's prog's!

I was thinking about using the two hdd's like this: One for daily use, without
AV and FW for better browsing, downloading and general use (speeds), and the
second for storing and backup!

Or something like that, I didn't think it completly through, does it sound cracy enough to work?

My doubt is if a virus or malware is able to go from one hd to another hd,
if so it would be completly useless, btw, can you password protect a
secondary hard drive?



Wrenchman

 

Do you have a death wish for your primary drive? I mean, no firewall or AV and cruising the web like that. Thats like walking around a pistol range with a target on your back. Everything thats out there will be homing in on you.

 

LOL

No, seriously though, I'm without fw atm. but me speedstream router has a
fw though, I've just checked it out, it's set to Low!



"Bottom line is this. A leak technique can only work as good as the users bad
judgment." KingSteve.

Conclusion: All firewalls leak!

Could we get back to the topic before this runs out of hand?

How would you configure a computer if you had two hd's, one for daily use
and the other for backup but still in use?



Wrenchman

 

Sorry about the mess, I did install OA3 FW yesterday so you guys don't have
to worry anymore!

Just a little technical question, is a secondary HDD vulnerable against viruses
from the internet, I mean directly or does it have to go through the C drive first?

I am going to try and install SP3 (again) wish me luck!



Wrenchman

 

My HDD is about same size as your two combined. I divided it into 2 partition; 45 GB active primary NTFS partition for Windows XP/SP3 and most programs, and 67 GB logical NTFS partition for [my] documents, downloads, projects, movies, music, backups...

Backup protections:

1. Install Windows Recovery Center (type click run from start menu and type
D:\i386\winnt32.exe /cmdcons
where D: is the location of Windows XP installation CD) - it's only 7MB of HDD space, and let's you go directly into DOS mode at startup for system checks, fixes, (you can run chkdsk, fixboot, fixmbr, etc. from there) - however, go to control panel -> system -> advanced -> and set the boot selection screen to show for 2 or 3 sec only instead of the 30 sec default wait.

2. Install ERUNT (freeware from MG) - it backups up your registry each day at first boot. (I disabled System Restore and just run ERUNT whenever I want an extra registry restore point).

3. Install Acronis True Image 2009 or similar, and make full backups of your C: partition to be saved on the other drive, or an external hard drive. I think the Acronis trial version let you make a rescue boot CD, which you henceforth use to make and load backups even after the trial period expires on the installed program. I always keep my last two backups.

My data partition never craps out, and if Windows (C does, I can restore the ERUNT backup from Normal Mode, Safe Mode, Bart XPE, or even Recovery Console (remember "batch erdnt.con" command in case of Recovery Console). And if that's not enough, I always have the full Acronis backups.

 

This is good stuff On edge!

I'll do the dL's asap, thanks!

You know, it's some of this that I've been looking for,
something that will back me up in time of trouble!

Should I dL and install all of them, as a complete package?



Wrenchman

 

To answer some of your original questions: a secondary hard drive can be infected by viruses. It doesn't happen often, but it can happen. I have seen viruses and worms that have moved through an entire network infecting each drive on the network including external USB drives, back up drives, RAID drives, even a USB thumb drive that was plugged in at the time. I have had my personal USB thumb drive get infected by plugging it in to and infected PC. Also, it is possible to password protect the secondary drive. I also believe that you can install software on the drive that will prompt for the password when any type of activity is attempted on the 2nd drive. This could alert you to a possible virus trying to write itself to the drive, or if a 'data mining' virus is searching for files on the drive. You should be able to find some freeware of this type here at Major Geeks in the Security downloads section, or possibly in the Admin Tools section or the Covert Ops section, and maybe even in the Drive Utilities section.
Good luck, I hope this helps!

[dlb]

 

Yeah totally dude!
Thanks man!
"Also, it is possible to password protect the secondary drive."dlb

My wife plugged in a pendrive that was infected from her school, little did
she know, that's probably where we got the "pray" virus from, she said "oh,
that reminds me all the computers in school are infected!



Wrenchman

 

Ehh, I would like to know if it is safe to execute this file? :duck



Wrenchman

 

Before I execute any file I've downloaded, I scan it with my antivirus program and my anti-malware program.

You should upload that file to Jotti http://virusscan.jotti.org/ where it will be scanned by 20 different programs.
If 4 or 5 say something is wrong with it, don't execute it.

 

1. Windows Recovery Center is on the Windows XP CD, so just install that shortly after you reinstall Windows. However, it only let you access C: root and Windows directories, unless you do the following:

a) Use "regedit" to go to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Setup\RecoveryConsole

and change "SetCommand" 1 to have access to all directories and drives, and set "SecurityLevel" to 1 if you want to skip the password login requirement for recovery center.

Also, check the corresponding values, if applicable, at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SeCEdit\Reg Values\MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows NT/CurrentVersion/Setup/RecoveryConsole

b) Copy the following 4 lines into notepad, and save it to C: or C:\WINDOWS as set_cmds.txt or similar - and leave it there, you need to run it (by typing "batch C:\set_cmds.txt") each time you enter Recovery Center to access directories outside of Windows and removable media, use wildcards, etc.:

set AllowAllPaths = true
set AllowRemovableMedia = true
set AllowWildCards = true
set NoCopyPrompt = true


2. ERUNT is a small program from here: http://majorgeeks.com/download1267.html

After you install it, go to "Start -> All Programs -> Startup" and right-click "ERUNT AutoBackup -> Properties" if you want to change the default settings. For example, I added /days:5 at the end of the string of commands so that it only keeps the last 5 days of automatic backups instead of the default month's worth.

The default backup location is C:\WINDOWS\ERDNT\[backups folders named by date]. You just need to remember that, so that you can find the backup (and run erdnt.exe by clicking the file in the appropriate backup folder, or using the "batch erdnt.con" command if at Recovery Center - it's best to keep the backups in a Windows based folder since you don't need special SET commands to access those).

3. Acronis trial version is here: http://majorgeeks.com/Acronis_True_Image_Home_2009_d2236.html

But it says the trial version won't let you backup/restore from the RescueCD (full version does), so maybe there's another free alternative that you can use if you'd rather not pay the $50 price. I have the full version, it works great, but maybe some of the freewares can do a good enough job.

 

Just saw Macrium Reflect Free on MG: http://majorgeeks.com/Macrium_Reflect_FREE_Edition_d6034.html

It's the best free backup alternative to Acronis True Image that I'm aware of. The free version lets you create a full backup partition or partitions and a rescue CD to boot with. That's all you really need.

I tried it on a virtual machine; backup was fast and recovery worked. I haven't used the recovery on my (non-virtual) laptop, but the backup was about as fast as Acronis (~20min).

Acronis TI has saved my arse many many times, so I suggest people buy it, but if not, at least download Macrium Reflect Free and back up your C: partition weekly.