creating one machine for two different uses - work machine for dad and gaming for son

May 4, 2018
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Hi all.

I'd love some help on this please

I have a machine, specs below, that I need to use for graphic work - but I also want to let my son use it for gaming.

The problem to solve is that i dont want any cross-conamination. I dont want his spurious website visits to catch anything that might contaminate my work.

I have pondered a dual boot.
Buy some more drives and give him his own bootable drive and me mine. however I then realised that when he boots in it will still 'see' my disk drive and could still contaminate it.

After some research im considering an external dock system - one that I can eject each drive depending on who is using the machine.

ive also considered that I could keep my work files on ejectable media - usb etc - but if his useage corrupts the o/s and so the use of my software, i dont really want to have to keep wiping it down and rebuilding it.

But im not sure if that is the most efficient and cost effective way to go. - we have very little budget - or even if it might cause any problems i cannot foresee?

Im hoping someone here will be able to share some wisdom and tell me the best way to use this one machine as two - a gaming machine and a work machine - that cannot infect each other.

I hope ive been clear on my question. thanks for your time.



SPECS

3.07 gigahertz Intel Core i7 950
64 kilobyte primary memory cache
256 kilobyte secondary memory cache
8192 kilobyte tertiary memory cache
64-bit ready
Multi-core (4 total)
Hyper-threaded (8 total)

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760

Board: ASUSTeK Computer INC. Rampage III Extreme Rev 1.xx @133mhtz

12280 Megabytes Usable Installed Memory

SanDisk SDSSDA240G (240.06 GB)
SAMSUNG HD154UI [Hard drive]

Windows 7 Ultimate (x64) Service Pack 1 (build 7601.24106)
Avira - Antivirus

 

PraiseTheSun

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Feb 7, 2014
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I have a Gaming PC that I also use for work as the specs lend nicely to what I do, however i had similar concerns, I didn't want any of my work data to be at risk so I do the following:

I have all my work stuff on an external home server I built with a raspberry pi so that I can access my files over the network but they are not stored locally on my machine, I also have the only admin password to access it.

I also backup the server at the end of each month onto an external SSD, both for safety and so I can continue to work on my MacBook if I'm travelling.

Both fairly simple ideas, maybe worth considering, I don't know how destructive kids can be..... yet

 
May 3, 2018
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That's great. Thanks for the replies so far.

Seems to be the idea I had, to have removable hdd's.

I wondered about relying on server backups, but I'm too concerned that the boy will screw up the os not just my files. I don't want to have to keep wiping the os and rebuilding it.

So maybe a mix of that. Removable hdd 's with an os each and save my files backed up to a server

Thanks for your time. Much appreciated
 

PraiseTheSun

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Feb 7, 2014
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Depending on what OS you need for your work there are bootable OS's from USB sticks such as certain Linux builds, but I doubt this is what you are looking for. Other options could be by making a separate user on windows OS & just revoke next to all permissions & privileges from it, not allowing them to install stuff or edit important settings, it may even be possible for them to be unable to view your files this way.

The flipside of that solution would be that you would have to give them permission each time they want to install something so it could get annoying or you could still end up with malware if you are unfamiliar with what is legit vs malware
 
May 3, 2018
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For ease I'd love to just stick with one os one drive for os and one or two for programs and data. However I've locked down windows before and malware seems to still creep in.

Even steam seems to have an adverse effect on the computer he has been using. Additionally, he can only afford a few games so spends a lot of time looking for free games to play and no matter how well locked down windows is, he still manages to access free games that also provides lovely little bugs as gifts.

In theory if he tries to play a free game and it doesn't work it's because he is not supposed to be able to access it, and so if he can play it, in theory, it's clean.
Experience shows this not to be the case.