Hobo and Grandpa....Thank you for your help, I wasnt sure if I could do that or not. Quick run down...PC got infected with something, more than likely I opened up some bad mail, backed up as much as possible, had to reinstall O.S, I have about 5 gigs of music, which takes a long time to do a security scan. Your right, even if its stored somewhere other than your main HD your system still has to open it. Sorry for my Brain Freeze on the infected file question. Would a external HD make for a faster system scan if all my music is on the External?? Even though I have a 160g main HD?

Thank You Again.
Dimen9100

No it will not. It can actually be slower to scan an external hard drive due to the limitations of the connection USB/Firewire. Your CPU can not transfer information through external as fast as it can to internal sources. But in most cases this does not matter because in most cases your software can not transfer information to your CPU as fast as the CPU can operate.

Hopefully you can understand what I just said. It can be a little confusing.

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A little common sense goes a long way

Later Grandpa

You're right..It would take alot longer due to transferring info. via USB Cable. Sorry I'm being a little broad with my questions . Basicly I want to download my music to an external thinking I could scan my main PC without having to scan my music all the time . Any advise on best ways to go about this? also; will the downloads be slower than normal by saving them directly to the future external drive??

Thank You Again so much.
Dimen

Yes your scans of you PC will be faster if your saved file is on the external hard drive if you choose not to Scan that drive. And no your DL should not be slower unless you have one hell of a fast connection.

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A little common sense goes a long way

Later Grandpa

Thanks for all the help my friend, its greatly appreciated Just trying to be as safe as I can before I reinstall LW. Gotta keep the pc clean this time. Correct me if I'm wrong but LW should be almost the only program in Zonealarm Firewall settings that would need server internet rights??
Thank you again Grandpa, and I'll talk to you later.

Dimen