"The Internet gave me a virus that broke my computer!"

November 2, 2005 6:03 PM

I have a 3.5" hard drive enclosure, and a friend would like to connect an old, virus-riddled, hard drive to it to retrieve his data. What should I do to protect myself?

His computer broke a year and a half ago, and he claims that it was because a virus he got from a website destroyed his motherboard. (?) I'm a bit skeptical about this, to say the least, but still...I'll be connecting his hard drive to my new computer and I want to take every precaution I can.

-I have AVG and AdAware installed.
-Long story, but we really don't have an option beyond plugging it into my computer.
-Windows XP on both hard drives, if that matters.
-CompUSA wants 80 bucks just to scan and delete viruses on the drive, which seems LAUGHABLY overpriced.

Um...that's all I can think of. Oh: I really wish there were some sort of universal objective way to rate your knowledge of computers, but I guess I'd be a, err, "Power User"? If there were a spectrum of users, at one end was some sort of l33t Unix guru and at the other end my mom, I guess I'd be about halfway.

posted by Ian A.T. to computers & internet (9 comments total)

You're actually fairly safe from viruses if all you do is copy the data from one place to another - your computer isn't going to attempt to execute any of the programs on the external drive automatically.
posted by odinsdream at 6:10 PM on November 2, 2005

Maybe you would run less of a risk if you get the files off of his harddrive while running an os off of the cdrom. Something like knoppix or bartpe.
posted by meta87 at 6:11 PM on November 2, 2005

disable autoplay before plugging it in as an external drive, jsut to be safe. Tweakui is probably easiest.
posted by misterbrandt at 8:00 PM on November 2, 2005

Disable autoplay, pop it in. Immediately right click on drive and check "Scan with AVG". You will be ok.
posted by Dean Keaton at 8:08 PM on November 2, 2005

I would suggest (if you are feeling adventurous) downloading this 700mb CD .iso image file of Knoppix, a Linux CD that boots and runs without touching your hard disk at all. That'd let you poke around on the hard disk without any risk at all of any viruses or junk.

If you have a CD reader and a CD-R drive, you could even burn a CD with your friends' data at the same time and be done with it!

Using windows and a good anti-virus program is probably the best option for simplicity though.
posted by anthill at 8:58 PM on November 2, 2005

Ya as long as your virus definitions are up to date your essentially safe. You'll want to do a full scan of the disk once you get it connected. I wouldn't mess with the enclosure, I'd just hook it directly as a IDE/SATA device because your scan will be a lot faster.
posted by Mitheral at 5:37 AM on November 3, 2005

odinsdream said: "You're actually fairly safe from viruses if all you do is copy the data from one place to another - your computer isn't going to attempt to execute any of the programs on the external drive automatically."

That's assuming that the data you're copying doesn't include the viruses (which could be executed later).
posted by winston at 6:37 AM on November 3, 2005

There actually was at least one virus that could kill motherboards... it would erase the motherboard EEPROM chip, meaning it wouldn't boot up anymore. Most motherboards have soldered EEPROMS, and have no way to recover from a bad flash... if it's damaged, the board is usually toast. (some boards have had emergency recovery methods, but they've usually been more expensive.)

The idea of using a Knoppix boot CD is a very good one, in other words. Your friend may be exactly right about what killed his computer. Knoppix will give you an extra layer of protection.

That's probably not *necessary*, though. As long as you don't actually run any programs on the drive, just copy the data, you should be fine.

If you hold down the shift key while you plug the drive in, that will disable autoplay. You just have to remember to do it every time. Because of that, TweakUI is safer.
posted by Malor at 8:10 AM on November 3, 2005

Hello everyone...thank you so much for your answers! I'm glad to know that I won't have to do too many complicated things. Tonight we try the data swap...I'll let you know how it goes.
posted by Ian A.T. at 2:30 PM on November 5, 2005