insecure partitions??

[jxrry59]

I share my home computer with a friend. He does nothing but download forwarded emails and chat so I installed xp pro twice after splitting the hard drive thinking that programs and such can't cross partitions. I was wrong as I was able to, accidently, gather all the media file on the two drives. How do I make the two drives 100% secure from each other, if possible. Oh yeah, we both need administrator priviledges.

[boomwoody]

I don't quite understand what you're saying, but I think turning the file system format into NTFS may be some help.
Give your friend a user account but remember not one in Administrators, then set the access control to prevent your friend seeing your files.
Installing a Linux may be another way to do the same thing.

[Qualm]

Well, you will need a 3rd party software program of some kind, because as far as I know there is no way to hide entire partitions from an XP user with Administrator rights. Such details are always available in the Disk Management component of the Computer Management tool, as well as other places.

Here's great program that lets you hide specific folders and/or files: http://www.softbe.com/

- Qualm

[HTRegz]

There it is again.. Install Linux to solve your problem.... Damn people....wake-up.. Someone isn't going to install Linux because they need a fix to a solution... People use an OS for a reason... they aren't gonna move to unfamiliar territory to fix one little thing.. If that was the case everyone would move to MACs because .... well.. they're better.... heh...

That's my little rant... that's prolly my biggest pet peeve on these boards...

The first part of what boomwoody said is correct...... If you have your drives are FAT32 right now.. and you want to go with NTFS to start playing with security settings and ACLs... go to your command prompt and type

convert <volume> /FS:NTFS

Where <volume> is the drive letter followed by a colon (.... probably c: and d: since you said you partitioned. Then reboot.

When the computer has booted back up.. (make sure you both have your own login's and again like boomwoody said.. that your friend isn't admin)
- Go Into My computer
- Right click on the drive you want to keep him out of
- Select Properties
- Select the Security Tab
- Select his user name from the list
- Change the ACL as you see fit...

If you don't want him putting stuff on the drive, then you'll want to remove write and modify access and maybe read + execute.. It's hard to say. u'll have to decide that

Just remember.. that if you have a program that he uses.... for example ICQ.. that stores files on the drive you are changing his access to... then he won't be able to use them anymore.

Your best bet is to have 3 drives.. a system/software drive and then two personal drives.. then just lock him out of your personal drive and restrict his access to the system/software drive.


[EDIT]
Sorry about that.. I didn't see the we both need admin rights part.... In that case just make sure you both have accounts with admin privledges.... then change access to his username... sure he can change it back, but if he doesn't know how.... At least that should work fine.. because i know you can lock any user out.. You'll have to change the Administrators group access as well... Take it off Full Control and give it no access and then just give your user name full access
[/EDIT]

[jxrry59]

So you are saying delete a partition- icould make him power user- now how would i do that and double the size of one of the partitions without losing anything-is it possible? I dial up and only have a few blank cd's left and been downloading for two days. I don't want to have to do it agin but makes sense. Or could I just make him a poweruser on his own partition?
One last thing-Can Virii and the like migrate across partitions??? Thanks all!

[HTRegz]

If he can be a power user.. Then just make his login as that.. then change the Power User groups ACL on the drives... There's no need to delete any partitions.. If you are in the Admin group and He's in the PU group.. give Power Users full access to his drive and restrict their access to your drive.... Why does it matter if the migrate or not? If it's on your system it's on your system... If their migration is based on the user logged on, then they would only beable to travel to parts of the system where that user has access... I believe... it would depend on how the virus worked I guess...

[the_JinX]

How about dual booting

With a dual boot you both got your own operating system..

but that might just be a bit advanced...

[Dr_Evil]

jxrry59

This threads might help you ..........


http://www.antionline.com/showthread...hreadid=239893


Dr_Evil

[rcgreen]

How about dual booting

With a dual boot you both got your own operating system..

but that might just be a bit advanced...

I got the impression that this is what he was already doing, that there was a
separate installation of the OS on each partition, and each user was booting
his own patrition. I can't think of a way to make the partitions protected from
the other user, as long as he has administrative privileges.

[slarty]

If you have administrator privileges on NT you will always be able to see the contents of all local drives.

You can create two NT installations which cannot see one anothers drives (because they are not assigned a drive letter), but that won't stop this from being trivially undone.

I cannot see how to do it if you *insist* on having admin privileges, short of putting a physical security device on the drive.

Oh, and installing Linux is not going to change things at all, this is a *physical* limitation.

I suppose you could use encrypted volumes, but you would need to store the system(s) on unencrypted drives and there's nothing to stop one of you installing a keylogger to get the other's password.

I wish everyone would stop posting "Install Linux" as some sort of universal panacea. I use Linux, and trust me, it isn't so different from Windoze.

Q: How do I....
A: Install Linux it will create world peace, spice up your sex life and cause you to win the lottery.