Recovering data from a virus-infected hard drive

[FriedSalmon_]

Hello, I have an old computer that has not worked in quite some time. (I assume) the viruses had gotten so bad that it could barely boot. I have found that you can buy an adapter to use the hard drive as an external one, and recover files that way, but also heard that this can result in my other computer being infected. Is there any way to work around this? All my google searches lead to are programs you have to pay for that undoubtedly don't work.

 

[JaredDM]

If it's an older hard drive, then likely all the viruses on it are easily recognized now by AV software. Just plug it in and run a virus scan against the drive before you start to copy anything over.

Viruses, like any other computer code, do require the executable code to be actually run for them to work. So it's not going to just jump into your computer from being plugged in.

Trust me, I work in data recovery and in a given week 20 or so drives full of data will be plugged into this computer and data copied out. At least 70% of the drives that come through have viruses on them and we run virtually no active AV software on these workstations because they would constantly interrupt our work. But, never once have we managed to get a machine infected because we never run any programs or execute any code from the drives. It's just a point a to point b copy operation and you can't really get infected that way. Not until you open something.

 

[scout_03]

the other thing when you gone scan it made sure your internet is not connected to system this will avoid of some software on it to try to connect to the net and do a full long virus test scan and even a malwares scan .

 

[JaredDM]

the other thing when you gone scan it made sure your internet is not connected to system this will avoid of some software on it to try to connect to the net and do a full long virus test scan and even a malwares scan .

A virus can't just activate itself by the drive being plugged in. It would need to be executed somehow by an infected file being opened and executing. So there's no need to unplug your internet if you're going to plug it in and AV scan it first thing.

 

[FriedSalmon_]

If it's an older hard drive, then likely all the viruses on it are easily recognized now by AV software. Just plug it in and run a virus scan against the drive before you start to copy anything over.

Viruses, like any other computer code, do require the executable code to be actually run for them to work. So it's not going to just jump into your computer from being plugged in.

Trust me, I work in data recovery and in a given week 20 or so drives full of data will be plugged into this computer and data copied out. At least 70% of the drives that come through have viruses on them and we run virtually no active AV software on these workstations because they would constantly interrupt our work. But, never once have we managed to get a machine infected because we never run any programs or execute any code from the drives. It's just a point a to point b copy operation and you can't really get infected that way. Not until you open something.

Thank you, this is very relieving to hear. I will attempt to recover the data tomorrow and report how it goes!