My concern is viruses and I was curious if you could force an internal hdd/external hdd to ONLY connect to the virtual machine in vmware and make is so that it doesn't connect to the host at all. I know that you can connect external drive to vmware but it will auto connect to the host if no vmware machine is running.
Obviously I have a VPN kill switch so VPN leaks shouldn't be an issue, but as I said my main concern is viruses and my ideal setup would probably be having external drive or an internal drive ONLY able to connect to a vmware virutal machine, but perhaps this can't be done? Or isn't the correct setup for safety?
I looked into seed boxes and tbh I would rather just seed torrents from my own machine and not pay for a service like that.
I mean perhaps the best setup is to have a completly seperate machine for torrenting purposes, but for me this is out of the budget right now..
I can't give a ton of advice but I have done well in avoiding things like viruses through a combination of making sure that I always try and get torrents from more well-known and trusted sources and also by running Linux. I'm sure I have been previously saved simply due to running Linux.
It's been a while since I have used Windows as a main OS so forgive me if it doesn't work like this but I do remember Windows Defender having the ability to quarantine folders. Is it possible to quarantine your torrent downloads folder and scan it before you run anything that's been downloaded? Even if that works it's obviously not foolproof and will only prevent you from being infected by things that are caught in the scan, but it's at least better than nothing.
I think quarantine is only for ~~confirmed~~ suspected infected items. Windows will move it and prevent any use of items until you confirm you want them, at which point they are just regular files and folders.
Security by obscurity is a real thing though. I'm sure Linux has saved many possibly including myself.
If you have any files you are suspicious of you can run it through virus total. Other than that I do agree try to find groups you trust.
That actually does sound like what I remember. Maybe I was thinking about something else.
I did hear about something called "Controlled Access" a while back. It looks like it might be an option that could work in certain situations.