multiple partitions are safer in virus infection?

In terms of virus infection, having multiple partitions
are safer than single partition?

For example, if the machine has drive C, D, and E.
Drive C is the windows operating system, and drive D and E are
data files drives. If drive C is infected, will it infect
drive D and E also?

Please advise. thanks!!

David
Tue Sep 27 15:12:28 CDT 2005

From: <strutsng@gmail.com>

| In terms of virus infection, having multiple partitions
| are safer than single partition?
|
| For example, if the machine has drive C, D, and E.
| Drive C is the windows operating system, and drive D and E are
| data files drives. If drive C is infected, will it infect
| drive D and E also?
|
| Please advise. thanks!!

In short NO.

The number of drive letters or partitions has no bearing on being safer in terms of viruses.
A true virus will seek out anything and everything its payload is designed for.

--
Dave
http://www.claymania.com/removal-trojan-adware.html
http://www.ik-cs.com/got-a-virus.htm

D
Tue Sep 27 15:22:57 CDT 2005


<strutsng@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1127851648.398509.77470@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> In terms of virus infection, having multiple partitions
> are safer than single partition?
>
> For example, if the machine has drive C, D, and E.
> Drive C is the windows operating system, and drive D and E are
> data files drives. If drive C is infected, will it infect
> drive D and E also?
>
> Please advise. thanks!!
>

Depends on what the virus is. If it's something designed to infect operating
system files, that what it does. If it's designed to look for MP3s, it will
find them, no matter what drive letter. And if it's a network-aware virus,
it can look for network connections and infect other computers on the
system.

Ian
Tue Sep 27 16:02:29 CDT 2005

On Tue, 27 Sep 2005 20:12:28 GMT, "David H. Lipman"
<DLipman~nospam~@Verizon.Net> wrote:

>In short NO.
>
>The number of drive letters or partitions has no bearing on being safer in terms of viruses.
>A true virus will seek out anything and everything its payload is designed for.

Yep, agreed.. to an extent. Some (a few) malware have the directories
hard coded into the virus payload. So if for example windows is in the
d:/ it wont be affected by malware which has the windows directory
hardcoded. This malware differs to that which use %WINDIR% for example
instead of c:/winnt or c:/windows.

Steven
Tue Sep 27 19:04:23 CDT 2005

It depends. If you are logged on as an administrator and all drives have
default permissions that allow administrators full control then you are very
vulnerable when a malware is installed. Some malware can obtain system
access even if you are not logged on as an administrator though keeping
current with critical security updates at Windows Updates can minimize that
risk particularly if you are using XP SP2. If the malware is installed when
a non administrator is logged on and the other drives do not have
permissions to those drives for that user then you are less likely to have
those drives infected or modified - at least right away. I do like using
multiple partitions because it can make the computer easier to recover from
a problem than if you have one large partition. I keep a Ghost image of my
operating system and core applications on a partition separate from the
system partition and on a DVD disk. I can reinstall my operating system and
core applications in less than five minutes. --- Steve


<strutsng@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1127851648.398509.77470@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> In terms of virus infection, having multiple partitions
> are safer than single partition?
>
> For example, if the machine has drive C, D, and E.
> Drive C is the windows operating system, and drive D and E are
> data files drives. If drive C is infected, will it infect
> drive D and E also?
>
> Please advise. thanks!!
>