Can you download to a seperate HDD safely

[nickym]

Hi there. I previously had a seperate computer I was using to download torrents, in order to keep my every day computer safe from viruses. This has gone on the blink. I wondered if it would be safer to put a new (seperate) hard drive into my every day computer and download onto that or if it was best to download to an external hard drive, or is it just not safe to use your regular computer? I had the problem in the past of getting viruses and then having to totally wipe and start again, which is why I started using my 'download' computer for torrents. I usually go through Vuze.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Nicky

[unilx]

If you want to be able to take the hdd with you and use any where on any computers, get a external hdd, if not, go with a internal hdd. Both have their pros and cons. A internal will probably have better performance but lacks portability. It depends on your needs.

[Patriotlion]

Good morning, I'm leaving my honest opinion.
Regards, use the disk of your PC regularly, I do not see why not use, since it, take into account, which will put on disk [learn triage]. Create a new partition, and / or new disc on pc, to maintaining the first, free of possible virus, you can always do it, getting to your consideration.

[TaffelChip]

What about common sense what / where you dl & a decent antivirus soft? Then you could also run suspicious files in the sandbox mode...

[kawa_z750]

I am downloading on a separate internal HD, used just for torrents, ever since my OS runs from SSD.
You could use an external too, but if you want to swap files between disks it might slow things down (in my case it does, usb 2.0).

But I used to put everything just on my OS drive before, and never had any virus.
I suggest you download from good trackers and to get a good anti-virus, that would be the easiest...

[michaeltorrent]

if you want a external hdd then use it if not then put the hdd in the pc, you dont need a pc just to download get a anti virus program if you are worried about virus, if you use privet trackers the chance of you getting a virus goes down too, i recommend AVG but there are other ones out there. if you are still worried about loosening all you storage then make a back up of everything important.

[atticus88]

I have never ever downloaded any viruses/malware from torrents. Just don't go onto any porn sites or download anything random or use isohunt or piratebay.

PS. Having an external hdd is pretty useful though for portability.

[kungfusticks]

If you download from private trackers only, your chances of getting a virus is going to be very slim, especially since uploaders have to apply on many private trackers. As well as this, read the comments on any torrent before downloading. Stay away from porn sites and crack websites and you will increase your chances of not getting a virus. If a file you are looking for cannot be found on multiple private trackers, but find it on a random site, it will most likely be fake.

In regards to internal and external drive. There isn't much of a difference, just dont go with external or seperate drive because of viruses. You open any file on a seperate drive within your OS, you will get infected if you dont have a decent virus/malware/spyware setup.

My advice would be, only download from private trackers, stay away from dodgy sites, only get an external drive if you want portability and forget about getting infected with a virus.

[Mickey_D]

External or internal really doesn't matter what comes of viruses if you click on a virus file and it's connected to your computer in any way going to have problems. if you're trying to move to using private trackers more or at all then you'll have less problems with viruses. It's not unheard of but the amount of viruses you see in the private world are sufficiently less than public. When selecting a new hard drive it's all going to boil down to your needs, a internal one is going to be cheaper usually and have better performance. An external hard drive is on the much more convenient was still enough performance to playback 1080P video flawlessly but at a higher cost.

I would suggest weighing the pros and cons and deciding what is most important cost and performance or convenience. I can't stress enough that having an external hard drive is no safety net against viruses an less you're using it to back up your OS.

[BlackHat]

I would have to agree with the poster above, putting your files on an external drive will not stop you from getting viruses, viruses will spread. The only way that I can think of that would make the other hard drive safer is making it so that the user running your torrenting program (and by the spread of permissions, the permission level of the files you download) rooted in that hard drive, so they don't have permissions to access the other drive. The problem is then that they won't have permissions for your Windows files (i.e. the OS) so it will crash in on itself. The only other solution I can think of is to torrent inside a VM, as it is very difficult for a virus to spread out through a VM (it is just nigh of impossible if done right, viruses aren't designed to spread from a VM). I don't see any reason why you wouldn't be able to do this, though it would take a significant amount more resources to run the VM (in terms of RAM and processor cycles). Really, the issue here is you probably shouldn't download from places where you frequently get viruses. Lucky for me, I run Linux on my laptop, and I do all my burning and stuff on it, so I never get viruses! :) Access Control is so much better in Linux. You could look and see, I know there's a program called Bit Browser (iirc) that runs a browser on a separate, unprivileged user, so it's similar to the Virtual Machine thing, you can see if anyone makes a program like that for uTorrent, etc. The only other thing I can think of is you could get a second HDD, and put a separate OS on it (you could do another Windows, or you could do Linux or something like that) and dual boot. Boot into the torrenting OS when you want to seed/leech and boot into the regular one when you want to browse the internet, but that seems like kind of a pain.

Or you can do a seed box ;) though, I guess that wouldn't help the viruses unless you put some kind of virus scanning on the seedbox, which I would assume you can do, but I've never tried.

[Cerberusj]

As all the above mention already. Internal, external, it doesn't make a difference virus wise unless you run the torrent program in a virtual machine on your downloading machine, that would basicly create a partition block of the size you give it and it can run an extremely small OS like Damn Small Linux with Deluge as a torrent client.

That's the only real way to create a closed secure enviroment INSIDE an insecure system used for your daily work.
Other option is to run everything in a sandbox but that's pretty much the same thing, just be sure to have a good internet security suite.
Everybody has his/her own preferences if it comes to security suites, I myself love comodo because it's kind of paranoid like i am lol, other users rather risk 1 real malware slipping through to minimize the amount of False Positives created by heuristic scanners etc.

Idk what kind of router you have but if it's a newer router with a USB slot you could most likely install opt-ware on it and use your router and an external HDD as a seedbox with SAMBA (drag and drop in windows) and/or FTP/SSH whatever access, this all will only work if your router is qualified for a custom 3rd party linux firmware (usually, if you're able to manually update the router thru the web interface it's flashable). I've got a couple of threads about it on here. If it sounds interesting lemmi know and i could check if it would be possible with your model :).

Hope that helped a bit ^_^.

[BlackHat]

The NFS idea is actually quite brilliant, Linux would be essentially virus proof, and his Windows would really only be a vessel to transport the files when seeding. If he was viewing video, I'm not sure whether he would be susceptible or not, since he is downloading and executing the files, just not the entire file at once, and they don't sit on his drive, I suppose it depends on the viruses method of action, but that does sound like an excellent idea! Kudos to you!

[SuperN3rd]

Viruses?? Sounds to me like you are using public trackers. I have never got a virus from anything I downloaded from any of my private trackers.

As for using a different computer or a different hard drive, there is no need at all to do that. Just don't be dumb with the things you download. If you are using public trackers or file lockers or something like limewire, then viruses will be an issue, but if you stick to private trackers you shouldn't have any problems.

As a side note - In my setup, I have all of my torrents download directly to a SSD. Once they finish downloading they transfer over to my RAID. I do this for speed reasons and because µTorrent has issues with downloading directly to my RAID. I'm only using the SSD as a buffer.

In reality, you probably won't be downloading stuff to your OS drive, just because it will be too small. Downloading to a internal drive will be better, due to speeds, but if you can't reach those speeds anyway, then it doesn't make a difference. External is only useful if you wish to drag it around and plug it into other computers.

[Cerberusj]

The NFS idea is actually quite brilliant, Linux would be essentially virus proof, and his Windows would really only be a vessel to transport the files when seeding. If he was viewing video, I'm not sure whether he would be susceptible or not, since he is downloading and executing the files, just not the entire file at once, and they don't sit on his drive, I suppose it depends on the viruses method of action, but that does sound like an excellent idea! Kudos to you!

Thanks :D i set something like that up as a virtual test before, he could run a simple ClamAV if needed but as far as i know stenography wouldn't harm him if he's streaming because the amount of data sent to his computer is most likely not enough for the code to execute correctly :). 99% of it stays on the linux distro at all times :)

Viruses?? Sounds to me like you are using public trackers. I have never got a virus from anything I downloaded from any of my private trackers.

As for using a different computer or a different hard drive, there is no need at all to do that. Just don't be dumb with the things you download. If you are using public trackers or file lockers or something like limewire, then viruses will be an issue, but if you stick to private trackers you shouldn't have any problems.

As a side note - In my setup, I have all of my torrents download directly to a SSD. Once they finish downloading they transfer over to my RAID. I do this for speed reasons and because µTorrent has issues with downloading directly to my RAID. I'm only using the SSD as a buffer.

In reality, you probably won't be downloading stuff to your OS drive, just because it will be too small. Downloading to a internal drive will be better, due to speeds, but if you can't reach those speeds anyway, then it doesn't make a difference. External is only useful if you wish to drag it around and plug it into other computers.

I've succesfully reported and found 14 virusses (none False Posetives) in different Scene autopack game releases on both BG as BCG.

The problem is that the people auto packing with standard wrappers can easially inject something in the execution that isn't noticed that quickly :).

Eventhough private trackers have significantly less virusses they are still around ;)

[BlackHat]

Couple things to correct about the above post, Firstly, a decent HDD has an average write rate of about 160Mb/s far greater than pretty much anyone has in their home (that's more than a maxe. Out 1 gbps line assuming perfect network conditions) there is really no need to use an SSD as a buffer. Secondly, internal vs external has no bearing whatsoever on speeds, that depends upon the type of hard drive, rpm for an HDD, the interface (USB is slow, but there are external Sata drives, and e Sata drives) and a few other things. I personally would do the NFS, it's just so nice to be able to get your files from any PC on your wifi :)