Prevent access to disks

[Neftex]

I would like to have my system set up for work and for personal use. I have 3 disks, i plan to use one for work and the other 2 for personal use. Each use case will have its own Windows OS install. What i want to achieve is that work OS cant touch the data on personal disks and the other way around.  I will not have full control of the work OS so settings there will not guarantee much. I wanted to disable the disks in bios but the board doesnt have that option. I cant air gap the disks because some are m.2 and i wont take the pc apart every time i want to boot the other OS. Is there a way to solve this?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Probably the easiest way is to encrypt the disks. Then the other os can't touch the data without a key. 

[Neftex]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Probably the easiest way is to encrypt the disks. Then the other os can't touch the data without a key. 

would help for read only, i would like to prevent writes as well

[Eigenvektor]

3 minutes ago, Neftex said:

would help for read only, i would like to prevent writes as well

The OS isn't going to write to a drive/partition it can't read unless you explicitly tell it to format or something

[Neftex]

51 minutes ago, oofki said:

I disable the other one(s) in device manager 

this isnt safe enough imo, especially since i wont be in control of the work OS

 

 

how about some middleware OS that i could install on the work drive that would then boot the work OS with limited hardware access? i remember unraid was shown on the channel a while ago, would that work and perform well?

 

I have 2 sata disks and 1 m.2 - I could install work OS on one of the sata disks and airgap it with a sata power switch extension like this one https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000601282955.html to prevent writes from personal OS. And with the middleware on the work drive i could probably disable access to the personal disks

[r00tb33r]

Back in my day this is how we rolled.  Things weren't as easy, but also more fun.

 

So if you say it's not safe enough, you can do this, or you can use eSATA disks and unplug the power from them.

[thevictor390]

The only possible options you have are BIOS settings or a physical switch. Anything you do in your personal Windows is irrelevant to the other Windows install which will always have the ability to format the disks.