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What partitions for a virus/spyware scan?

Discussion in 'Security and Privacy' started by psaulm119, 2007/12/31.

  1. 2007/12/31
    psaulm119 Lifetime Subscription

    psaulm119 Geek Member Thread Starter

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    I recently partitioned my hard drive. Since then, I've only booted into the new partition (F). When I do virus or spyware scans, should I scan the entire hdd, or just the F partition? I'm not sure how airtight the "borders" of partitions are, esp. since I can access files on the C partition as if they were simply another directory on my F partition. I normally do the most intensive "full" scans available, and I figure I can save a bit of time if I really don't have to scan the partition that I never boot into.
     
    psaulm119,
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  2. 2007/12/31
    PeteC

    PeteC SuperGeek Staff

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    IMO - OS partition regularly - should be automatic with your AV/antispyware anyway and full system scan occasionally, say 1/month. If you automatically back up data from OS drive to elsewhere or have moved the location of the temporary Internet folder to another drive (partition) include that location in regular manual scans.

    Partition 'borders' are watertight - two physical hard drives or two partitions on a single drive behave in exactly the same way.
     
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  4. 2007/12/31
    psaulm119 Lifetime Subscription

    psaulm119 Geek Member Thread Starter

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    OK Pete, sounds good, but let me make sure I understand what you would advise me to do.

    The OS partition is the partition I boot into, correct? I typically have Windows defender and my av both working in the background; and this partition I scan once a month. Now since I haven't moved the location of the temp files, I don't have to worry about that. Now the data I use is on another partition (C). I not only save new docs to that partition, but save my edited changes to current docs in that partition too (if that makes any sense).

    so since my data is on another partition, would you recommend that I scan that as well?
     
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  5. 2007/12/31
    PeteC

    PeteC SuperGeek Staff

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    The OS partition is the one you boot into and is protected by your AV and Windows Defender - the latter should be scheduled to run a quick scan daily.

    On the basis that your AV is effective it can be argued that a regular manual scan - I implied weekly - is not necessary, but I would run a Full System Scan monthly - that is all hard drives/partitions.

    In addition I would run Spybot & AdAware on a full scan basis monthly.
    Yes - there are, for example macro viruses which Word was/is susceptible to.

    FWIW - my strategy on a computer with 3x hard drives (no RAID) and 17 partitions .....

    Eset Nod32 AV, Eset Firewall and Sunbelt Counterspy running all the time of course. Counterspy is scheduled to make a 'quick' scan daily. On a roughly monthly basis I run a full system scan with Nod32, Spybot and AdAware.

    I have several other layers of protection as well - SpywareBlaster, IESpyads, MVP Hosts file, Win Patrol and immunisation through Spybot.

    All that is ever found by the various scans are the occasional low level tracking cookies from sites like Amazon and Cnet.
     
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  6. 2007/12/31
    psaulm119 Lifetime Subscription

    psaulm119 Geek Member Thread Starter

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    OK, thanks Pete
     
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