Transfer Of Viruses Between Dual Boot OS

I'm planning to build a new desktop for online trading. Generally the advice for trading is to have a dedicated system, separate from the the computer you have for general use. This is because a trading system should not be used for any general internet browsing or downloading. You don't want to pick up any malware, viruses, trackers etc. Any slow down or instability on the system can end up costing large amounts of money.

What I'm wondering is if I dual boot two copies of windows 7 on separate hard drive partitions, or even on entirely separate hard drives, is it possible to ensure that nothing picked up on the drive used for general use can possibly pass onto the trading partition? Are there any particular steps that need to be taken to make sure the partitions are entirely separate from each other and can't communicate?

 

Running two copies of 7 on the same licence is a licence infringement and could also lead to activation issues, but putting that aside I would not think it advisable to dual boot using the Microsoft method of dual booting, in which the boot files for both systems are located in the same partition, and in which the active OS can also see the inactive OS' files.

A couple of suggestions, others will have more -

- Install a Linux system for your trading

- Get a spare machine dedicated solely to trading.

You could also set up two Windows systems in complete isolation from each other on separate hard drives, dual booting from BIOS and hiding the other drive at boot time, but that is a bit more complicated.

 

The boot manager that came with PowerQuest Partition Magic did that very nicely & easily, but that software now belongs to Symantec, so it can no longer be recommended.

But I'm sure some other partitioning software offer the same these days?

 

^This^!!

 

Yes, Acronis Disk Director also has a boot manager which works in a similar way, but it isn't free. Personally I have long used Grub4DOS, a very simple to use boot manager with which you can install any OS to any partition, even to logical partitions, all optionally isolated from each other, and with the added benefit of being able to boot most bootable CD images straight off the hard disk. Pity it hasn't become more widely known.

 

I know 'free' is nice but since you're doing business, pay for it. It's not that much really.

 

Apologies earthling, that post was meant for the OP.