I did an extensive search and still couldn\'t find the answer I\'m looking for,

Question

I did an extensive search and still couldn't find the answer I'm looking for, so I decided to post my question here to see if I could get some help.

I would like to install a second hard drive on my laptop and use it as something like a sandbox, just for games and home, and the other for work and sensitive data only. Both hard drives have windows installed on them.

What I need is a way to completely isolate them from each other so there is no way for a malware to spread from to the other: virtually unplug the hdd I'm not using, if you will.

To be even more clear, suppose I'm intentionally gonna infect one HDD with the nastiest of the malwares, I need to make sure that it is impossible for it to spread to my other drive.

Is there a way I can achieve this without having to physically remove the HDD I'm not going to use?

Thank you!

Explanation / Answer

If you used whole-disk encryption on one (think BitLocker), then you can isolate one from the other. Leave the sandbox drive unencrypted and your production drive encrypted. Setup your boot manager to choose between the two and when booting up the production drive, you supply the decryption key (USB dongle).

This would protect your production drive (in more ways than one) and prevent the sandbox drive from doing anything to the production drive, including deleting anything.

Another thought is to use a file system that the other OS cannot read. If you are using Linux you might be able to simply not include the drivers for the file systems used on the other drives (requires knowledge of how to compile a custom kernel).

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse I
• Subjects

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.