2 Potentially easy Virus Releated Questions.

I have two questions related to viruses that may seem obvious to those in the know but are not to me.

Firstly, if i set up my master hard drive up with three partitions, one for Windows, one for linux and one as a simple storage drive for both linux and windows to use (i havent done this so am not sure if its possible). But if i get a virus while browsing the internet on windows can it spread to the other partitions. I.e can i get a virus/worm on my linux operating sytem from the windows.

Secondly, are viruses/malware only dangerous on the drive where your operating system is on. As from what i have understood viruses cause their damage by interacting with the bios or operating system. Therefore if they are on the slave, should i worry. As i have a 300gig slave. I can scan with my Antivirus my master in about 15-30 mins, if i do a full system scan with my slave it takes 2 hours. Should i not bother with scanning the slave. Or what could happen if i dont.

Thanks

 

You should be ok with Linux being able to access your stored partition along with windows. If you have any problems, there are a lot of apps out there that will help you.

As far as the virus goes, viruses that are targeted towards windows won't have the same effect on Linux because it is an entirely different file system. For instance: if a virus hit your windows drive..it would probably dump something in you system32 folder and make a few registry modifications. If that same virus hit your linux drive..it would not be able to find a system32 folder or a registry. This is the same reason software designed for windows does not work on Linux and vice versa. You're pretty safe in this manor

I would go ahead and scan the slave drive occassionally just to make sure you don't have something sitting there waiting to be activated. Viruses that hit you plant themselves inside folders and reg settings to start up without your interaction. Unless you have some weird worm, they generally don't scan your system for slave drives and try to infect random files (although I'm sure there may be a few) If all the virus is doing is sitting on a slave drive, it won't hurt you unless it has become activated. I would scan the slave drive occassionally though.

I hope this helped

 

Absolutely a Windows virus cannot infect a Linux filesystem, and vice versa. I have not heard of any malware that is designed to infect multiple O.S.; the overwhelming majority of malware targets Windows for obvious reasons [its desktop dominance]. Capp has some very good advice for you.

 

So what about it simply spreading from my windows partition to my storage partition on the same drive. As i will be using that to store files on windows

Thanks

 

Generally, viruses are designed to infect the drive the operating system is running. This is because, that is the only one that is active to spread itself and be able to run. If it copied itself to a storage drive, it would just sit there. Unless you have a virus/worm on your system that is designed just to search all drives for a *.doc and infect it, you will be safe having your stuff stored on the other drive. Since you have your Windows Install on a seperate partiton, your storage partition will be ok. A lot of viruses use Windows System environments to plant themselves. Such as %sysdir% to automatically find C:\Windows\System32. Since you don't have an OS on that other drive, these variables won't even see it.

I have had a storage drive on my system for over 3 years and I've never had any scans from any AV/Anti-spyware/Anti-Trojan find anything on the other drive.

Is that what you were asking?

 

Thanks Randy