Could a virus on other drive effect another?

Hello, sorry for the uninformative title, here's my question: I have windows 10 installed on an external drive, if this drive became infected (virus, malware, spyware, e.t.c.) could it then effect my internal windows 8 drive?

EDIT: When I use windows 10 I turn the other OS's drive to offline.

I would think so mattering to type of virus.

It can be infected by a special type of malware called: "worm" is designed to automatically replicate and distribute itself from one storage media to another storage media (such as external hard drive, internal hard drive, network drive, floppy disk drive, or usb flash drive).

Iloveyou worm used email as its channel and Stuxnet worm used a small usb flash drive as its channel. Found the info here: What are the harmful effects of a computer worm? | Laptapos.com

cipals15 said:

It can be infected by a special type of malware called: "worm" is designed to automatically replicate and distribute itself from one storage media to another storage media (such as external hard drive, internal hard drive, network drive, floppy disk drive, or usb flash drive).

Iloveyou worm used email as its channel and Stuxnet worm used a small usb flash drive as its channel. Found the info here: What are the harmful effects of a computer worm? | Laptapos.com

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Even if the other drives are offline?

hackFORlife said:

cipals15 said:

It can be infected by a special type of malware called: "worm" is designed to automatically replicate and distribute itself from one storage media to another storage media (such as external hard drive, internal hard drive, network drive, floppy disk drive, or usb flash drive).Iloveyou worm used email as its channel and Stuxnet worm used a small usb flash drive as its channel. Found the info here: What are the harmful effects of a computer worm? | Laptapos.com

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Even if the other drives are offline?

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No, technically not possible.However there's nothing stopping said malware from bringing the disk back online, and writing to it.If the disk is not spinning, or the heads are parked, its impossible for malware to be written to it.Considering HDD cache, it's possible, be it pretty slim, that malware could write to the HDD cache and wait for the disk to come online. That would take near perfect knowledge of the firmware, or knowledge of a huge flaw in it. More likely to be a highly targeted attack if it happened.Not to drift too far from the topic though.SSDs are another beast, as they have no heads to park, and onlining/offlining one would be nearly instant.

I was thinking about this a long time ago and thought about using 2 SSD hard drives.. 1 would be a clean install of windows where I ONLY use it for like banking websites and purchasing things and you know, sensitive information things..

and then the completely separate other Hard drive.. Both have windows installed on them..

which I would just literally swap in and out only when I used it for all the other crap I do that isn't so "sensitive" and could potentially harm me in whatever I do.. like trying beta software or watching risque youtube videos.. so I would have 2 complete separate hard drives that would be only 1 in the machine at 1 time..

then could a virus somehow get to the "clean" system hard drive? I would only ever have the clean system hard drive plugged in whenever I just wanted to do my "sensitive" stuff..

SSd's are like $90-150 now on amazon.. so buying 2 isn't a problem at all..

hope this makes sense

brooksndun said:

I was thinking about this a long time ago and thought about using 2 SSD hard drives.. 1 would be a clean install of windows where I ONLY use it for like banking websites and purchasing things and you know, sensitive information things..

and then the completely separate other Hard drive.. Both have windows installed on them..

which I would just literally swap in and out only when I used it for all the other crap I do that isn't so "sensitive" and could potentially harm me in whatever I do.. like trying beta software or watching risque youtube videos.. so I would have 2 complete separate hard drives that would be only 1 in the machine at 1 time..

then could a virus somehow get to the "clean" system hard drive? I would only ever have the clean system hard drive plugged in whenever I just wanted to do my "sensitive" stuff..

SSd's are like $90-150 now on amazon.. so buying 2 isn't a problem at all..

hope this makes sense

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By nature of how computers work, your idea is almost perfect, except for the risk of other computers on the network.


I'm let you in on a method of mine, which I trust to work.

Disclaimer:
This method of mine is only as secure as the hardware of the computer (example: hardware keyloggers) and network infrastructure (unencrypted traffic is never secure anywhere). A hardware keylogger can't really be beat, so stand public computer practice still applies. "If you don't own the computer, it owns you."


I've used this method for years and haven't had any issues. You avoid the need to swap hard drives quite easily as well.

First you must go to the trouble of making an custom Windows PE. Include some security tools, enhanced firewall, highly restricted, stripped down networking. Add a basic explorer shell, and a web browser. Configure it to not mount any partitions at boot and limit it's drivers to a bare minimum. Then package it up to boot and run from memory. (~200MB to 400MB total size)

Then if you want more security, you create a secure Linux live boot operating system. Same ideas as above. Security by minimalism and lightness (reduced attack surface).

Include tools on both that detect things like arp poisoning and other bad things hackers employ.

Put together a secure boot compatible bootloader, and include a bootloader for legacy BIOS systems as well, package it up into an ISO thats less than 1GB.

Then find yourself an old flash drive and write the ISO to the flash drive and be sure to tell the flash drives firmware to emulate a cdrom and force read only mode.

Then you boot the flash drive when you require a secure environment.