OS on drive other than C

[SIK1]

I have been reading about how other people set up their hard drives and a few people say that by running your OS on a drive other than the C drive it makes the computer more secure because many of the viruses, worms, and malware are written specifically for the C drive.

One guy had the OS on the C drive as well as on an E drive and he ran it off of the E using the C only when he had a problem. For the most part these were on one physical drive partitioned into several smaller ones.

What are your thoughts on this?

Is there a down side to doing this?

Any other tips or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Only a completely retarded code will be hard addressed to some drive instead of system variables. So no, there's no protection whatsoever.

[Ghosth]

I disagree.

You may have never had it happen to you, but I have seen virus and malware attacks attempt to get to my computer.
But because XP  was installed on D:/windows and it targeted C:/windows it never happened, and I was able to clean house.

Another option would be to use a Linux Boot cd once a week or so. Boot to a different OS other than windows, and use virus/malware in that distro to scan your windows side. Booting from a CD means you KNOW its not infected, and can't be messed with. Many Linux distro's come as a bootable disk, with full antivirus and malware software available. (not to mention firefox, & thunderbird) Mepis, Xandros, are just a couple of examples.

C:\Documents and Settings is a MAJOR target for almost all virus's and malware attacks.
But if it doesn't exist, or doesn't tie in to your current OS its not going to be as hard to deal with.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

I disagree.

You may have never had it happen to you, but I have seen virus and malware attacks attempt to get to my computer.
But because XP  was installed on D:/windows and it targeted C:/windows it never happened, and I was able to clean house.

Another option would be to use a Linux Boot cd once a week or so. Boot to a different OS other than windows, and use virus/malware in that distro to scan your windows side. Booting from a CD means you KNOW its not infected, and can't be messed with. Many Linux distro's come as a bootable disk, with full antivirus and malware software available. (not to mention firefox, & thunderbird) Mepis, Xandros, are just a couple of examples.

C:\Documents and Settings is a MAJOR target for almost all virus's and malware attacks.
But if it doesn't exist, or doesn't tie in to your current OS its not going to be as hard to deal with.

Just because of an isolated incident I wouldn't draw too many conclusions. If computer code was that primitive, no program would function when the OS was installed to a non-standard drive. Granted viruses are often badly coded and simple but I wouldn't bet on it.

Having windows on D: for protection is very much like having sex with your girlfriend on 'safe days'. You're bound to get caught, it's just a matter of time.

[Fulmar]

Hey I wore my red socks out in the thunderstorm the other day, but didn't get struck by lightning.  The red die has similar properties to rubber, clearly.

[humble]

It's not going to help much but it certainly wont hurt anything. I have 4 OS's on my box + two VM's. I have an XP/work and XP/aceshigh + a Vista and Linux build. I run sandboxie and a linux VM as well at times. I use acronis as a backup system and have a seperate data drive as well as a seperate drive for programs. Everything is backed up weekly and critical stuff daily (or more often)...