Dual boot 2 Different drives, prevent malware?

Hi first post here.
I was wondering if someone could give me some advice about security.
I was thinking about running a virtual machine for the added security, but heard they can be problematic when trying to run games or anything intensive.

This led me to thinking, is it possible to have 2 seperate HDDs with 2 seperate windows installs. One connected to the net and one not.
Is this even possible during a windows install, to ignore one drive completley?

And even if it is possible and the internet-enabled drive/windows gets malware, would this prevent prevent that malware from reaching the other drive?

if anyone has any thought, thanks in advance

 

Thanks for the reply.
So it is possible to have two seperate drives with two seperate windows installs?
Its like having 2 machines in 1, ideally one install would not know about the other (if this is possible) so files would not be shared in anyway.

I would only be using the internet-enabled drive for online gaming, no downloading or surfing, as i do this on another machine entirley(but this machine isnt capable of gaming well).

I depend on my main machine for work, so cant risk malware at all. However i would like to use its power for gaming, so single player games are fine. However online/steam games/drm require net access.

This is why i am thinking of this dual boot idea. Not sure if its overkill though!

The only files i copy from my downloading machine to my main machine are music files that are pre-scanned before copying.

 

I run XP Pro on my modular/media bay drive, Vista Ultimate on my "C" drive and 8.1 Pro from a USB drive created with AOMEI Partition Assistant's Windows to go Creator feature. I use EasyBCD to switch between them. I have file sharing turned off but can still access all three drives through Windows Explorer to transfer downloads (only from sites I know are safe) to my external data drive. I've also got backup images of the drives (in case of problems). I don't play online multi-player games, only stand-alone games I've installed locally (Win 8.1 Pro doesn't even come with the games that used to be included with Windows like Mine Sweeper or Solitaire).

 

Is this nativley in windows? are have you set this up specifically?
This is the kind of thing i wanted to avoid, so if i accidently have malware on one drive, i wont on another as they cant access one another's files, being seperate windows installs.

 

You have to turn off "Simple File Sharing". Each version of Windows is slightly different in how to go about it but if you go to Help (and Support in Vista and later) and enter "Turn off simple file sharing" (without the quotes) you should get instructions on how to do so.

This still won't absolutely guarantee prevention of cross contamination. The best anti-malware is YOU.