Portable Anti-virus suggestions

[ratul]

I want your views on Portable antiviruses, their benefits and complications..
i recently purchased a 1TB external, and now it's almost 350GB full, so i don't want to loose the data coz of a virus infection, i have Kaspersky Internet-Security on my lappy, and i know it'll be able to remove the infections, but scanning can take ages on the hdd, given i have lots of files, compressed archives, exe's on it..
So i thought of any portable anti-virus available but don't know about does they work or not??
Need your views, and if you use one, share your experience..
Also suggest free and paid alternatives if you know any..
I found the best free one acc to the reviews: Clamwin Portable.
For Paid, i'll say Tech Titan T-Drive Pro, as it uses Kaspersky Engine..

[Disclaimer: I have'nt tried any one of these two AV's yet as of writing this..]​

 

[harshilsharma63]

You can encrypt the drive.

 

[ratul]

You can encrypt the drive.

yes, for that i have truecrypt, but i also need some alternatives, wanted to know how good and reliable these portable antiviruses are..

 

[Vignesh B]

I have been using Clamwin Portable for more than a year. Never got an infection yet. Once it detected the conflicker worm when I scanned a friend's usb drive.
Remember though portable antivirus don't provide real time protection. For real time protection the program would need administrative rights to scan system files which is not possible with portable program.
Basically common sense should be able to protect your drive more than anything!

 

[ratul]

I have been using Clamwin Portable for more than a year. Never got an infection yet. Once it detected the conflicker worm when I scanned a friend's usb drive.
Remember though portable antivirus don't provide real time protection. For real time protection the program would need administrative rights to scan system files which is not possible with portable program.
Basically common sense should be able to protect your drive more than anything!

How does it provide protection??
As you said it's not real time av, so if i put my USB device into an infected computer, will it stop the infection from creeping into my device without doing anything, or i still have to manually scan the drive???

 

[Vignesh B]

How does it provide protection??
As you said it's not real time av, so if i put my USB device into an infected computer, will it stop the infection from creeping into my device without doing anything, or i still have to manually scan the drive???

You will need to manually scan the drive. Only that it will detect malware suppose say, the system you inserted is infected and its AV is not working, you can use Clamwin to scan.
You can even turn on the write-protection on your drive(if it supports).

Edit : I just checked the link you had given for Tech-titan and that page says it supports real-time protection. You 'may' go for it. If possible download some trial edition before buying.

 

[ratul]

You will need to manually scan the drive. Only that it will detect malware suppose say, the system you inserted is infected and its AV is not working, you can use Clamwin to scan.
You can even turn on the write-protection on your drive(if it supports).

Edit : I just checked the link you had given for Tech-titan and that page says it supports real-time protection. You 'may' go for it. If possible download some trial edition before buying.

thanks, i then guess that clamwin is'nt much of a help either if i have to manually scan the drive..
Yes, tech-titan provides real-time protection as they say, but the problem is there's no trial for it , and i have asked for it here in local shops, none have heard it's name, if anybody here using tech-titan, please post your experience..

 

[topgear]

use this to "vaccinate" your PD and it really works !
ANTIMALWARE: Panda USB Vaccine - Download FREE - PANDA SECURITY

 

[Vignesh B]

^^ Good one.
But isn't autorun by default disabled in Windows 7 & above?

 

[ratul]

use this to "vaccinate" your PD and it really works !
ANTIMALWARE: Panda USB Vaccine - Download FREE - PANDA SECURITY

haha, that's a clever s/w, disabling autorun on PD itself, but i already have disabled it on my system..
but some viruses don't wait for autorun to load, you just have to open the Pen drive on the system, and bam!!, even with no autorun, they'll infect every exe in USB device in a matter of minutes (the infamous virus who creates shortcuts of everything and hides original files, you just have to open pen drive and copy anything to your pd..)
AUTORUN can save your system from being infected, but not the USB device..

 

[topgear]

that tool saved my PD from virus infection many times but I've never copied any exe files from untrusted pcs only zip and rar archive.

 

[swatkat]

I'd recommend Dr. Web CureIT! (Dr.Web CureIt! — download free anti-virus! Cure viruses, Best free anti-virus scanner! it uses powerful Dr. Web AV engine and database. You can also try out VIPRERescue (VIPRE Rescue - VIPRE Computer Recovery Solution from GFI).

 

[ratul]

I'd recommend Dr. Web CureIT! (Dr.Web CureIt! — download free anti-virus! Cure viruses, Best free anti-virus scanner! it uses powerful Dr. Web AV engine and database. You can also try out VIPRERescue (VIPRE Rescue - VIPRE Computer Recovery Solution from GFI).

thnxx for the suggestion, but vipre is "rescue disk" sorta solution, while Dr.Web is more like Clamwin one, still they are on-demand scanners..
i am still looking for a user of "tech-titan" or any other solution that provide portable real-time protection..

 

[topgear]

portable AV scanner has it's own limitation ( refer to post # 4 ) but it's possible provided the AV supports this feature and you have administrative access privilege into the OS the 'other' pcs you want to use the portable AV with real tine scanner.