Introduction
Modern operating systems like Windows NT/2000/XT are increasingly vulnerable to damage due to unwanted changes to the system areas. Serious system problems can result from system changes made by poorly designed application software, user mistakes, or viruses and other malware. The cumulative effects of normal operation can even be the cause of minor problems. One method that might be used to prevent unwanted changes would be to write protect the system drive with the jumper provided on some hard-drives and use a second drive to store user data. Unfortunately, modern operating systems like Windows require changes to their system areas on a continual basis in order to function correctly. This is where Drive Vaccine steps in. Drive Vaccine write protects a logical hard drive, yet leaves the system usable.
History
Drive Vaccine is marketed by Horizon DataSys Incorporated, a company that has been marketing a variety of products to prevent unwanted computer system changes since 1996. The Drive Vaccine product has been targeted primarily at the "public access computer" market and has been sold extensively to schools, libraries, hotels, etc.
Horizon DataSys directs the typical individual computer user to their RollbackRx product, which they feel is more appropriate for the individual user. The basic technology behind Drive Vaccine is licensed from Centurion Technologies Incorporated, who's CenturionGuard product (introduced in 1996) mated the same technology with a hardware switch, rather than a hot-key combination and a password. Horizon DataSys has added their Hybrid Network Manager providing remote and scheduled management for large network environments.
Both Horizon DataSys and Centurion Technologies cooperate, and improvements by one company may readily appear in the other's product. Centurion Technologies is now marketing their own software-only products. DriveShield is the basic software solution and quite similar to Drive Vaccine, but without the Hybrid Network Manager, DriveShieldPlus adds features to make the product more useful to individual users, and Cornerstone adds expansions similar to the Hybrid Network Manager. Other companies are now producing competitive products (some of them quite good), but Centurion Technologies and Horizon DataSys began the industry, and they have the most experience and longest track-record. Their products have proven reliable and stable, and they have no perceptible impact on system performance. A list of similar competitive products is given at the end of this document.
How it works
Drive Vaccine write protects a complete logical hard-drive with the exception of a temporary "Data Storage Area", the size of which is set by the user on installation. The rest of the drive is write-protected at the sector-level making it very secure. As the user makes changes to the protected drive, any changes or additions are written to the temporary storage area. The changes or additions are never permanently written to the protected drive. Until the next reboot, all subsequent access to the additions or changes is re-directed to the temporary storage area. When the system is shut down, the temporary storage area is flushed clean, and the next time the computer is started, the drive is identical to the last time it was started. Of course, if you want to save any data permanently, it must be saved to an unprotected hard-drive or logical drive. The protection can be disabled to allow for system updates and the installation of new programs that the user actually wants, then re-enabled to protect the updated drive.
Installation
Drive Vaccine itself is easy to install and configure. The instructions were well-written and easy to follow. Unfortunately, unless you wish to fully protect a computer from ANY permanent changes while protected (as you might with a public-access computer), there will be a great deal of work changing the system configuration prior to installation.
Drive Vaccine only protects full drives (hardware or logical). So, before installing Drive Vaccine, one must establish a second (unprotected) drive to allow non-perishable data-storage while the main drive is protected. To accomplish this, either a second hard-drive must be installed, or one must partition the hard-drive into two logical drives. In some situations a network drive on another computer might also be used, but this would not work well in most circumstances.
Installing a second hard-drive is a fairly straight-forward task. However, partitioning an existing hard-drive normally requires a fresh install of the operating system and all software. In order to avoid such hassle, one must use Partition Management software, and even then, the process can be dangerous and should not be attempted with free or bargain software. A list of recommended partition managers is at the end of this document. Partitioning the drive should be accomplished before installing Drive Vaccine.
