Question About the HDD

[furius980]

Hello!

I have an old HDD at home from a PC that I had a long time ago and I wanted to know if there would be a problem if I connected it to my current PC considering that Windows XP is installed on that HDD and that there is a suspected virus on it. It has files that I would like to recover and if you can have it as a 2nd storage.

Thanks for reading! I await your response.

 

[Aeacus]

Well, if you connect it as data drive and doesn't boot off from it, there is no worry. I've often done this very same thing, during data recovery operation for my friends and family.

Though, the virus on it could be troublesome. So, best to run full drive malware scan once you've hooked it up and it shows up in Windows. E.g MalwareBytes.

 

[furius980]

Well, if you connect it as data drive and doesn't boot off from it, there is no worry. I've often done this very same thing, during data recovery operation for my friends and family.

Though, the virus on it could be troublesome. So, best to run full drive malware scan once you've hooked it up and it shows up in Windows. E.g MalwareBytes.

Oh thank you! I had that disk there collecting dust for fear of operating system incompatibilities lol, I'll do what you tell me.

 

[furius980]

Well, if you connect it as data drive and doesn't boot off from it, there is no worry. I've often done this very same thing, during data recovery operation for my friends and family.

Though, the virus on it could be troublesome. So, best to run full drive malware scan once you've hooked it up and it shows up in Windows. E.g MalwareBytes.

Bro, it's very infected lol, what should I do now?

 

[Aeacus]

When running AV (antivirus) program, you can quarantine the infected files and then delete them via the AV program. Once that's done, run the scan again. And so forth, until scan doesn't detect any malware anymore.

Oh, if no malware is detected, restart the PC and run the scan again. Some malware is more stubborn and can come back after restart. But 2nd time around, usually, the AV program can catch and delete it.

It wouldn't hurt to run malware scan for your whole PC. Since i don't necessarily think you've gotten better in avoiding malware, given that how infected your WinXP drive is/was.

 

[CountMike]

Bro, it's very infected lol, what should I do now?

Make BOOTable USB with this
https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/kaspersky_rescue_disk.html
Connect disk but don't BOOT fromy our Windows but from that USB.Repeat if needed until clean.
if you want to be extra careful, make a Live Linux bootable USB, BOOT from it and copy just necessary files that are not programs elsewhere. Linux doesn't care about windows malware nor can be infected by them.

 

[furius980]

When running AV (antivirus) program, you can quarantine the infected files and then delete them via the AV program. Once that's done, run the scan again. And so forth, until scan doesn't detect any malware anymore.

Oh, if no malware is detected, restart the PC and run the scan again. Some malware is more stubborn and can come back after restart. But 2nd time around, usually, the AV program can catch and delete it.

It wouldn't hurt to run malware scan for your whole PC. Since i don't necessarily think you've gotten better in avoiding malware, given that how infected your WinXP drive is/was.

I did the same thing with malwarebytes and I think it solved it because when I ran another scan it didn't detect any threats. In any case, I will do a complete scan of the PC to see if it detects anything daily. Thx.

 

[furius980]

Make BOOTable USB with this
https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/kaspersky_rescue_disk.html
Connect disk but don't BOOT fromy our Windows but from that USB.Repeat if needed until clean.
if you want to be extra careful, make a Live Linux bootable USB, BOOT from it and copy just necessary files that are not programs elsewhere. Linux doesn't care about windows malware nor can be infected by them.

This method does not delete my data, right? And from what I see it can also be used to install missing Windows files.

 

[CountMike]

This method does not delete my data, right? And from what I see it can also be used to install missing Windows files.

Not if they can be cleaned of malware but that goes for any antimalware/antivurus program.

 

[Aeacus]

Linux doesn't care about windows malware nor can be infected by them.

While true, but when infected file is copied over to the USB and then again over to the new Win system, malware can infect new Win system as well.

So, your method doesn't actually get rid of the malware from the files of old drive. And malware can live in any file. Image, video etc.

 

[CountMike]

While true, but when infected file is copied over to the USB and then again over to the new Win system, malware can infect new Win system as well.

So, your method doesn't actually get rid of the malware from the files of old drive. And malware can live in any file. Image, video etc.

That was just second part of that method. You can use it to transfer files to another media, even on same USB and let an AV like mentioned bootable Kaspersky work on it without affecting Windows.