I have a host Win 7 system, with a virtual machine running Win XP installed on the host. I have an antivirus installed on the host and also on the virtual machine. Now, my host machine has to deal with using USB drives from a lot of other sources which tend to be infected. My host AV tends to catch those, but since no AV is perfect, I am a little worried.
I figured that two different AVs (one on the host and the other on the VM) have a better chance to detect malware than just one. Hence my questions:
- Is it a good idea to mount my host machine drives on the virtual machine, and to use the AV on the virtual machine to scan my host (host and VM antivirus are different, and the host AV already scans the drives)?
- What are the advantages/drawbacks and potential pitfalls in this setup?
- Can I use the same setup (one AV in VM and one in host) for scanning USB drives - scan with host AV, then scan with VM AV?
If it matters, my host is more important the VM. If something goes wrong in the VM, I can simply remove and recreate a fresh one. Also, I am aware that it is possible to use bootable AV disks, but since I already have this setup, I was hoping to do this. Finally, if the VM matters, I have Microsoft Virtual PC at the moment, but don't mind using VirtualBox too - any pros/cons of the two with respect to this question would be appreciated if there are any.