Putting Infected HDD on my computer

joh06937

joh06937

New Member
my sister recently bought a new computer and wanted to transfer her old files to the new one. her old hdd had the os and the files on it, but it had a ton of viruses (one reason why they bought a new one). if i just put it on my computer as a second hard drive, am i at risk for getting the viruses on my computer or will i be able to transfer the old files (mostly pictures) to one of my hdds without any trouble?
 
As soon as you transfer files of any kind from an infected HDD to anything, you are risking transferring the virus too. You either have to get rid of the virus first or forget about your files and wipe out everything (do a fresh install).
 
no i just want to get the old files off of the hdd. it is an old 80gb ide so i will basically be putting it on a shelf for a long time :P but no, i don't plan on cleaning it up at all.
 
You are taking a risk on infecting your computer as well, just to warn you. What antivirus protection do you run?
 
Not sure if I am following this correctly. You want to have a dual boot between windows and ubuntu. You want to transfer your pictures to ubuntu by accessing the infected HDD through ubuntu. Then you are gonna leave the files in ubuntu and from now on access them fom there. Is that it? If this is the case, ubuntu will probably not get infected, because windows viruses are not "compatible" with linux. However, some day somebody might forget they were once infected, put them on a flash drive and carry them to their new computer. Or email them to a windows compuetr and create a lot o trouble for someone else. Just transfer them through ubuntu, then onto a flash drive and scan them thoroughly with 3-4 different programs (see the beginning of the forum for a list) and be safe. I think this should work for you.
 
lubolat said:
Not sure if I am following this correctly. You want to have a dual boot between windows and ubuntu. You want to transfer your pictures to ubuntu by accessing the infected HDD through ubuntu. Then you are gonna leave the files in ubuntu and from now on access them fom there. Is that it? If this is the case, ubuntu will probably not get infected, because windows viruses are not "compatible" with linux. However, some day somebody might forget they were once infected, put them on a flash drive and carry them to their new computer. Or email them to a windows compuetr and create a lot o trouble for someone else. Just transfer them through ubuntu, then onto a flash drive and scan them thoroughly with 3-4 different programs (see the beginning of the forum for a list) and be safe. I think this should work for you.
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No. He has an infected harddrive, and wants pictures off of it without infecting his computer. Ubuntu is a way he thinks to transfer the pics with out getting the virus.

Joh06937,

Through Ubuntu, all of the files on your current files can be accessed. So, if you transfer the pics using Ubuntu, then the virus could still access your harddrive, and infect it. You should just clean it off.
 
a virus can jump from one HD to another really quickly, so your best bet is to clean the virus first before you do anything else, specially connecting another clean HD
 
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