Dual-booting and Malware

[ti1706]

I've (obviously) never tried dual-booting before... so I'm here to ask if a virus/malware/infection of any sort can travel between OS installations. My reasoning tells me it can't, but what do I know? Before buying a second hd (I'd rather not partition) and installing Ubuntu, I'd like to be absolutely certain that my Windows installation is immune to anything the Ubuntu hard drive might pick up (since I intend to use Ubuntu for riskier activities).

Thanks for your time.

On a side note... is it even called dual-booting if I'm not putting 2 OS's on the same drive?

On another side note, I apologize if this is in the wrong section... I wasn't quite sure how to categorize

 

[David 617]

Viruses cannot travel between partitions/os's unless you infect the new machine by running the virus from the other partition. meaning, your safe unless you browse to your infected HD and click on a infected exe.
This is only the case if both are windows machines or you have a virus that can infect multiple platforms. since you are running a linux alongside win 7 your fine and don't have to worry about that.
Yes, its called dual booting when the machine has two boot choices.
Right section, good question.

btw, i'm not sure what you want to use the setup for, but did you look at virtual machines. "virtual box" is a free vm software that allows you to run linux within windows. anything that happens in the box does not affect the host os. this way you can run linux, w/o having to reboot everytime. (so need a stronger system though..)

 

[ti1706]

Best answer selected by ti1706.
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nAlright. Thanks for the help.
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n(I considered a VM... but I prefer the idea of having a separate hd. That way, I have more options.)