Second Drive

[RobcPettit]

Hi,
Ive recently bough an Advent 3.2ghz 160 gig computor and Im looking for some advice. Basically this is a family computor and Im using Sharescope, and will be adding Pfscan and possibly Metastock. I also use Excel alot. Im basically learning about TA and trying to use a combination of these programns to get a feel for the markets. Anyway my concern is, although Ive set individual accounts for each person, if they accidently cause a fault to my harddrive Im going to loose or my work. Also with the reasont news on viruses I thought Ishould look at protective measures. But were to begin. Im thinking about an external/internal harddrive for my Software only, if possible blocking access to others. Along with this either a zip drive to backup data or backing data to a cdrom rewritable. Is this a good option or is this over kill. Also if I go down this route will it be possible to make the second drive safe from anymishaps that happen to the first drive, ie a virus atack. Sorry if the question not very clear. On the second drive I only want my software nothing else. This way Ithought if i use the internet on the first drive only, and choose to download anything I can check out the download before transfering to the second drive if needed.

Regards Robert

 

[suggy]

um you could use RAID to mirror ur first drive if u were completely paranoid. would need exactly the same model and ur MB would need to support it. expensive.

or i suppose you could install a second drive with a seperate OS but I dont know if this is such a good idea. Or u could just have an external one as u say and detach it when u arent using it.

 

[wysinawyg]

The virus stuff is best dealt with by:

1. Get an anti virus programme such as the free AVG anti virus which is generally fairly well thought of.

2. Get a free software firewall such as Zonelabs.

3. Get a hardware firewall. Mine came with my wireless router but you could get the same thing with a wired router/firewall.

wysi

 

[davelong]

Hallo Robert,

For some years we have been using Partition Magic to create and maintain separate partitions on the same or more than one hard drive, we keep a current copy of each persons partition on a master hard drve which is removable and can be put in a safe place. This has always worked fine with Win 98 but I do not know about XP, I think I read somewhere it may cause a problem, but someone here will know the answer.
If It won't work with XP a simpler version might whereby you have a separate partition which is hidden from everyone else with a current copy kept on a different hard drive.

Hope this makes sense, I've just re-read it and i'm not so sure.

Kind regards

David