# AntiVirus for USB Thumb Drive



## src2206

Hello

I have to take my USB drive to different locations and I have seen that sometimes certain viruses migrate from the Host PC to my USB which are picked up by my own PC's virus scanner.
So, I was wondering is it possible to install an AV for my USB drive so that it will stop viruses from other PCs to my USB drive?

Please help. 

Thank you


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## blues_harp28

Hi check.
http://www.everythingusb.com/portableapps_suite.html


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## calvin-c

If I understand your question correctly, it'll take some discipline. I don't know of any AV (installed on a USB drive) that runs automatically when you insert the USB drive. Although now that I think about it you could configure the autorun to do that-but I don't know of any that do it by default.

There are several that run 'on demand' and you can run those to scan either PC or USB drive, depending on time (some PC's take a long time to scan).


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## Gizzy

you can try this http://www.drivesentry.com/ I think you can put it on your flash drive and only let certain programs access the flash drive,
though I have never tried it so I'm not absolutely sure how it works.

I think it's freeware,

also avast http://www.avast.com/eng/avast-u3.html and mcafee have realtime antivirus for flash drives that you can set to autorun

sorry I couldn't find a link to the mcafee for flash drives
and the avast antivirus is for u3 drives.


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## src2206

Thanks very much everyone.

Hello *blues_harp28 blues_harp28*

Sorry I could not locate anything which suites my need in that link.

Thanks *Gizzy*

It seems that Avast! suites my need perfectly. Unfortunately I do not think it is free. 

I did not really understood how drivesentry works and whether the free version is crippled. The documentation is not very clear.

BTW, one off topic suggestion: how about including Comodo BOClean as an Anti Spyware in your Sig? I think it is the only Free AS which offers Real Time AS Scanner and the latest version has taken care of the bugs. 

Hello *calvin-c*

It seems that Avst for USB drive has a real time scanner. Without this the purpose is not fulfilled. 'Cause you must have a blocker kinda thing to stop the migration of baddies from Host to my poor thumb drive. 

I think I'll give the Drive Sentry a try.

If any one of you (or other members here) may come across any AV specifically designed for working from a USB thumb drive with a real time scanner, please let me know.

Happy new year to you all


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## calvin-c

I've never used Avast although it's often recommended-now I'll need to take a look at that USB scanner as it sounds like a very useful tool 
AVG has a free AS with real time scanning. Won't run from a USB drive but you weren't clear if that was what you meant by 'only free AS...'.


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## calvin-c

Took a look at Avast & it requires U3 which I don't use. Shame-I'd use it if it wasn't tied to U3.


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## src2206

calvin-c said:


> I've never used Avast although it's often recommended-now I'll need to take a look at that USB scanner as it sounds like a very useful tool
> AVG has a free AS with real time scanning. Won't run from a USB drive but you weren't clear if that was what you meant by 'only free AS...'.


Suggestion regarding AntiSpyware was *directed to Gizzy only*, as a suggestive free antispyware program with Real Time scaner to be included in his Signature. :lol:



calvin-c said:


> Took a look at Avast & it requires U3 which I don't use. Shame-I'd use it if it wasn't tied to U3.


What exactly is U3?

Anyway I tried Drive Sentry but it won't serve my purpose. It is horribly crippled as Free. It will not download any of its signatures and every time it will connect through internet to its Database to check whether some thing wrong is going to happen.


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## lexicon

i had sandisk cruzer U3.
i installed avast and (set it to auto run) so that it runs everytime i insert the PEN drive in a PC.
it's really not worthy it starts scanning the whole PC to check for virus.(which is really annoying)
so next time i'll go for a pendrive with write protect option as in floppy.
well i have no idea what exactly U3 stands for .
you can check it out at www.u3.com to find more..
Thanks


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## src2206

Thanks lexicon for sharing your experience


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## lexicon

You're most welcome src2206


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## src2206

What I understand from considering different experiences as kindly shared by other users here, Drive Sentry GoAnywhere may be the most suitable for this type of need, but for a Free Version it always needs to connect to internet to check the legitimacy of a process which intends to access the drive. Apart from making the Drive Access slower, it is also not feasible to use the Drive with a PC connected to net during the usage period. Hence nullifying the whole purpose of the Software. The paid version downloads the Signatures to the drive (from what I understood from their literature) and that should speed up the whole process. But I can not vouch on that as I never had any chance of reviewing the whole software.


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## Gizzy

I had been meaning to try out drivesentry and I just used it but only for about 5 minutes what it seems to have to connect to the internet for is the white listed (safe) program list so that you won't be alerted for every single thing that tries to write to the flash drive, I don't think it uses signatures like an anti-virus (I could be wrong) it's more like a hips or behavioral blocker that alerts you about everything that accesses the flash drive and it's up to you whether you want to allow or deny it,

I shut down my internet connection and it still gave me the options to allow or deny things that wrote to my flash drive but I advanced my OS clock and it wouldn't start because it said the evaluation was over so I guess it's not free, I thought it would just be feature limited after 30 days like not being able to use the white list,

also yes I forgot to mention the avast wasn't free and I think the mcafee anti-virus is only for u3 compatible flash drives as well.

and I did try out comodo boclean about 3 months ago but it had some cpu spikes and my computer was running a bit slow but that was probably because at the time I had way too many security programs, I'll have to try it out again. :up:

Happy New Year :up::up:


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## calvin-c

Can't find out what U3 stands for, if anything, but it's a proprietary system for running apps from a USB drive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U3
I have two objections to it. First, it's proprietary. Second, it installs software that emulates a CD-ROM drive. The first is probably why it has few, if any, free apps. The second is probably why I have problems stopping it-I usually end up just pulling the drive out. Not a good idea but even the Eject function built into the U3 Launchpad doesn't work.

I much prefer portableapps.


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## calvin-c

Thinking about this, I'm not sure a portable AV real-time scanner is a good thing. It's well known that simply having 2 AV programs installed can cause problems & having 2 of them running at the same time is almost guaranteed to cause problems. So, to make a reliable portable real-time AV scanner you'd need it to detect whether or not another AV program was already running on the host PC. And I see no solution if the host PC has an outdated AV program running-if the portable AV program can shut down the host AV program then so can a virus.

I'd like to see this, but I think it's going to take some sort of 'magic' to make it workable.


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## Gizzy

calvin-c said:


> Thinking about this, I'm not sure a portable AV real-time scanner is a good thing. It's well known that simply having 2 AV programs installed can cause problems & having 2 of them running at the same time is almost guaranteed to cause problems. So, to make a reliable portable real-time AV scanner you'd need it to detect whether or not another AV program was already running on the host PC. And I see no solution if the host PC has an outdated AV program running-if the portable AV program can shut down the host AV program then so can a virus.
> 
> I'd like to see this, but I think it's going to take some sort of 'magic' to make it workable.


you would have to shut down the anti-virus on the pc you're working on before plugging in the flash drive, or now I'm not absolutely sure but when anti-virus programs conflict isn't it the anti-virus drivers that conflict or something like that?

but since an anti-virus for a flash drive would be portable then it might not have that high of a risk of conflicting with the computer's anti-virus,

but how you said about shutting down the anti-virus I would think that a portable anti-virus would be easily shut down by a virus because it can't hook into your system because of it being portable so real-time antivirus's for flash drives have good points and bad points, 
I suppose they offer only so much protection.


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## src2206

Gizzy said:


> isn't it the anti-virus drivers that conflict or something like that?


There are mainly two ways for AVs to conflict, 
1. One AV will pick up the Virus Signature database of other AV as "malwares", hence there will be conflict related to database. And if the user has set "automatic removal" as an option, obviously one AV will be ransacked by the other creating further conflict.

2. As you pointed out "drivers" or more precisely, services from two different AVs conflict.

In either way, there is a high chance of getting the PC messed up if two AVs are used.

Now, if one of it remains in the USB drive, I think that should exclusively work while any access to USB is attempted, hence it *may* not collide with the main PC's AV. Though I think, only the company or a AV coder is in best position to pass any authoritative judgment on this.


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## Alan Jenkins

I am pretty new to posting on forums but...

I have AVG 8 on my computer and have recently got DriveSentry on my USB key they work fine together. The point is though I do not need drivesentry on my USB key when I am on my home computer it is when I am sharing my documents or downloading files from *other peoples *computers onto *my USB key* that I need the protection from DriveSentry and this is where the product works well. I can not insist on other people providing an antivirus protection that is upto my standards as I insert my USB key -as I am not a big corporation- so I just let DriveSentry GoAnywhere protect my USB key for me.

_
By the way I just downloaded drivesentry for my PC too as I dont want to pay a subscription for AVG8._


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