Hi guys,

I need internet on my PC, but I want to be as secure as possible cause my work is also on that PC...I'm considering buying an external hard drive, putting all my work-related stuff on it as well as a Windows XP installation, and unplugging the drive and plugging in the ethernet whenever I need to access the internet.
Or I could do it the other way around and put my work on the main drive, and internet on the external drive...
Does anyone know if either of these would actually be secure or if I'd be wasting my time?

Thanks, James

If you permit your Internet system to become infected, then anything you attach becomes fair game for the malware.
The only "safe" way to run computers is to have a good anti-virus package installed. You must also be pro-active by not permitting spam to infect your system nor browse sites that are likely to host malware. Of course never run programs without scanning for malware.

If you follow good practices (including some not mentioned above) you won't have your system infected and the issue of keeping separate business and pleasure drives will be moot.

I agree with Robert G. Install robust anti-virus and anti-malware software and then be the 1st line of defense yourself. I do not say this to brag, but to illustrate that being on the internet does not automatically ensure infection. I have been connected to the inernet for 12 years and have never had a virus, trojan or other malware. The worst thing I get rid of now and then with a scan is ad trackers.

Someone else will know more, but I'm thinking an operating system will not run all that well over a USB connection. Plus you would have to go into your BIOS to tell it to boot up into XP from the exterior drive. I don't even know if that would work. But I might be wrong...

Your last sentence was my question as well, Drac.

James, if your XP installation would run from an external hard drive, you could never unplug that drive if you wanted to access the internet or even turn on your computer. You have to have XP up and running to run the applications that allow you access to the internet.

Following Robert's instructions about a good anti virus and malware program would go a long way to protecting your system with XP on your internal hard drive. You could then install your work files on the external drive and unplug that when you wanted to access the internet. But as Robert said, if your system does become infected, your external hard drive will become a target once it's plugged in.

There's always going to be a tradeoff between usability and utility. One way to keep your information secure would be to use a second computer for the sensitive stuff you want to keep secure, and never put that computer online. But suppose you had to contact your company or send a document to them online. You'd have to copy the document from your secure computer to a USB flash drive and then from the USB flash drive to your Internet computer. To reduce the chance of infecting your USB drive, you'd get a USB drive with physical write-protection -- a switch on the drive that prevents anything from being copied to it -- and you'd have the write-protection switched on whenever you copied anything from the USB drive to the Internet computer. Of course if you had to work on a document you'd received over Internet, this would present a problem.

There are new viruses (zero-day exploits) all the time, so you need an antivirus that uses heuristic detection (detects suspicious program behavior) as well as virus definitions. Of course this sort of antivirus is apt to interfere with games.

I do not use the same computer for important financial transactions that I use for games. A business-only computer does not need very high specs, or a good graphics card. It only needs to be clean. I actually use Linux on my "sensitive information" computer because Linux is a less attractive target for hackers than a computer with Windows.

If you really want to be "safe" when going online with financial applications, you could use a boot CDR (or DVDR) that boots to an operating system. An operating system burned to CDR or DVDR (a writeable, but not a rewriteable RW disc) can't be overwritten and a virus can't infect it. However you'd need the files you're working with on a separate external drive that can be written to, and you'd need some way of transferring those files if you'll be sending them via the Internet.

Even if you have the safest computer in the world, a compromised DNS server can cause your sensitive information to be sent to a hacker if you send it online. Even encrypted data can be compromised by man-in-the-middle attacks. There's only so much you can do.

Thanks everyone for your advice:) Very helpful and useful.