2nd HDD shortcut

[wildwood]

I have a second HDD (z-drive) installed in my computer and use that solely for storing stuff I don't want to loose. I only enable it when I'm offline to put stuff on, and disable it before going back online. Is it possible to put a shortcut on desktop to 'z-drive properties' so that I don't have to go through the foldertree every time? thanks.

[peanut]

what is the point in going through all the trouble of enabling and disabling it?

[wildwood]

I thought this might be a way to prevent a hacker/virus from damaging my information/images.

[Oneeyedvic]

how do you enable / disable it?

will a batch program do it - or what about a macro program?

[rojash]

Sorry, wildwood, but it seems to me that (unless you are physically disconnecting it) you are indulging in a completely pointless excercise. Anything you can do to disable it, a hacker or trojan can reverse. You would be better off relying on decent anti-virus, anti-spyware, and firewall.

[rojash]

On second thoughts, it's pointless EVEN IF you are disconnecting it. If you get a trojan on your first drive then it can access the second one as soon as you reconnect it.

[kepla]

If you want to do this really safely, then you need to make sure that any malware which finds its way onto the hard drive you use when online cannot ever get to your other hard drive when you are offline. The one guaranteed way of achieving this is to use the enable/disable feature in your PC's BIOS. Re-boot, and press 'del' to getinto BIOS config. When going online, mark your 'online' hard drive as 'auto detect' and your 'offline' hard drive as 'not present'. The BIOS will then not pass access across to the op system and the offline drive will effectively not be there. When you want to work offline, then re-boot and reverse the drive settings so your 'offline' drive is enabled but your 'online' drive is 'not present'. This will prevent cross-contamination from one drive to another.