Good afternoon, I was just hit with the cryptowall virus. I would like a setup that will make me impervious to viruses or close to it. I was thinking of setting up a virtual machine windows 7 in windows 7 if possible. I would like the virtual machine to only have network/ access. The idea is if the virtual pc gets bombed the whole machine won't be affect i can just delete the virtual pc and reinstall. Is this a viable solution for avoiding virus from affecting the physical machine. The idea is the local drives wont be visible unless mounted or added to the virtual pc when needed. Please comment with any thoughts.
Strange, I was just thinking about writing a sticky on Layered Protection..... I use it and am never infected with anything that can't be removed in a heartbeat...... I use Acronis True Image Home to make a scheduled Image Backup of my Boot drive every evening at 11:30PM so that if I am ever infected all I have to do is restore an Image from yesterday or a day or so ago. My data files are kept on a second drive along with my desktop so that I don't loose anything when restoring except maybe a newly installed program that can be reinstalled.. I also use a VM to run the web without bringing anything home with me.. I use Deepfreeze, which has a free trial. When you go into DF you are BulletProof and anything you pickup or delete is deleted or replaced back to default when you re-boot either to your real machine or back to the VM. A VM is great but my first 3 rules of computing are 1. backup, 2. backup and 3. BACKUP! 2oG
The VM i tested was slow. I was looking to run a vm with close to perfect performance since my pc is a pretty solid build with 24gb ram and gtx 980 ssd etc. with acronis true image home how big are the image files? and can i used to backup drives other than boot drive. Essentially can a save a small file for a dated backup say maybe once a month. Then revert to that state? If I have backups that allow this that would be idea. but i also dont want to replicate a TBs of data every time i run a backup.
DeepFreeze is not slow.. It works differently than a normal VM and is more of a "System Isolator" in order to make your machine bulletproof.. When you boot into DF it sets up a virtual copy of your real machine in unused disk space that is completely isolated from your real machine. Anything that is changed or added, like malware, is gone after a reboot and you are back to a clean, default machine again.. It requires a password to go to or get out of it therefore, if you have other users that you don't want screwing up your machine, leave it in DF and they can't hurt it.. lol I use DF Standard at home but they have a DF Enterprise that can save data to your server and still remain isolated. May not be for you, but get info on it here: http://www.faronics.com/products/deep-freeze/ I still use Acronis 2011. My old daddy always told me "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!". Well, it still works as advertised. lol You can schedule a backup by the Month, Week, Day or make one any time.. I use a Daily Chain set for 7 days that makes a Full Bku then Differentials after that for 7 days it then deletes the oldest ver. over 7 days except the first Full. My boot disk only contains windows and programs about 65Gigs in a 100Gig partition, no data or libraries and requires about 18-20gigs in standard compression for the Full Bkup and 6-10gigs for the Differential. These partition images are kept on a second drive. As for my Libraries and data including my Desktop, they are redirected to the second drive. By not backing up the desktop with my boot partition I never loose anything sitting there after I make a recovery.. Also, I don't backup the partition with my data, I use Acronis Non Stop Backup that keeps it backed up in realtime. My data partition is about 146Gigs and I have backups for about a month that only take up 62gigs. If I loose a data file, I can go back and restore it.. Acronis also has a Try and Decide mode that you can install and try software in a sandbox. hope that helps. 2oG
