Do the protection systems in DR DOS work against viruses?
Partially. Neither the password file/directory protection available from DR DOS version 5 onwards, nor the secure disk partitions from DR DOS 6 were intended to combat viruses, but they do so to some extent. If you have DR DOS, it is very wise to password-protect your files (to stop accidental damage too), but don’t depend on it as your only means of defense. The use of the password command (e.g. PASSWORD/W:MINE *.EXE *.COM) will stop more viruses than the plain DOS attribute facility (see D5), but that isn’t saying much! The combination of the password system plus a disk compression system may be more secure, because to bypass the password system a virus must access the disk directly, but under SuperStor or Stacker the physical disk will be meaningless to a virus. There may be some viruses that, rather than invisibly infecting files on compressed disks, very visibly corrupt such disks. The main use of the “secure disk partitions” system, introduced in DR DOS 6, is to stop people from
