[SOLVED] Can a used hard disk drive carry viruses?

[gordonmousedeer]

I bought a used hard disk drive. The seller assured me that it has no bad sectors. I need to know something..

Even after a hard disk drive gets reformatted or gets all of its information wiped clean, can it still carry viruses from an older system?

 

[white.a.drew]

I bought a used hard disk drive. The seller assured me that it has no bad sectors. I need to know something..

Even after a hard disk drive gets reformatted or gets all of its information wiped clean, can it still carry viruses from an older system?

Yes the info is still there unless you do basically a secure wipe it just marks the sectors as available

 

[Bob.B]

I bought a used hard disk drive. The seller assured me that it has no bad sectors. I need to know something..

Even after a hard disk drive gets reformatted or gets all of its information wiped clean, can it still carry viruses from an older system?

Depends.
What format was used?
What OS was used to do the format?

 

[Mr.Spock]

not likely unless it's burned into the firmware, you can secure erase the drive or low-level format the data otherwise. or do a writetest in most HDD utilities

 

[gordonmousedeer]

Depends.
What format was used?
What OS was used to do the format?

I don't know, the seller did not mention.

 

[gordonmousedeer]

not likely unless it's burned into the firmware, you can secure erase the drive or low-level format the data otherwise. or do a writetest in most HDD utilities

Can Crystal Disk Mark do that and make sure any virus that's in there disappear?

 

[Krotow]

You may not worry about viruses while disk partition table is wiped and created new with partitions added from scratch. If you want be sure enough, run secure wipe on that drive.

 

[USAFRet]

For a used hard drive, DBAN. No question.

Darik’s Boot and Nuke – DBAN

Erase hard drives, desktops, laptops or servers free with a Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN) download. Try it now.

dban.org

For a used SSD, secure erase.

 

[Mr.Spock]

can't recall for CDM, but definitely Hard Disk Sentinal, SeagateTools and its analogous WD utility. Bitdefender and Kaspersky have their own utilities as well if you run a security suite

Can Crystal Disk Mark do that and make sure any virus that's in there disappear?

 

[Bob.B]

I don't know, the seller did not mention.

How paranoid are you?
Assume That as soon as you connect the hdd it will attack.
Have everything needed to put the machine back together again.

More likely..... connect the hdd.....partition to one big partition.....format long the partition.

 

[USAFRet]

For any used system or storage device, you need to do a full wipe of everything.
As said, DBAN for a HDD, Secure Erase fo an SSD.

A simple "format" within File Explorer is nowhere near enough.
That just gets the partitions that are visible to File Explorer.


And preferably using a USB dock, so this drive does not spin up at the same time as the system starts.

 

[hotaru.hino]

Formatting a drive will simply wipe the partition table, meaning the data is still there. However, that data is effectively useless because without the partition table, the data just looks like garbage. So even if there was a virus, formatting will render it harmless unless you try to restore the old partition somehow. The only other way a virus can persist is via a boot sector virus, but I think those are largely a non-issue these days.

If you want to wipe the disk clean, I also suggest making a bootable Linux thing (either DVD or thumb drive) and run the tools in there.