Infected Hard drive data recovery

NiGHTSNiGHTS San Diego Icrontian
edited August 2004 in Spyware & Virus Removal
If I have a hard-drive that might, and I stress might, have a virus on it, will there be any risk of spreading this virus to a new master HD if the infected drive is set as the slave? I need to recover data from my girlfriend's father's small business computer, and that hard drive has all the data on it.

Apparently a windowsME file got corrupted on the old computer and won't allow them to use the installation properly anymore, so they went and bought a new computer. I've decided to show up their retarted secretary and backup the data she refused to for 4 years because "she didn't know how."

So, is this senario safe, or do you all have any better ways of transferring files from an "infected" harddrive?

Comments

  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited July 2004
    take the HD and transplant it into a working machine with a known good and recently updated AV. Scan the drive from Windows (ok if real good AV is running) or Linux(better, simply because Linux cannot run Windows virals itself, but you can get AV that can scan for Windows viruses for it) in the computer you transplant it into, and clean it. RECOVER what is left after the scan. The problem with the other way, a CD boot scan from a rescue-capable CD, is you usually are missing the latest AV nd definitions, and the only problem I see with the Windows hosted scanning approach is if you have a worm on the Me CD, the computer you put it into might get to fight worm infection.

    The GOOD thing is, this is a FAT32 file system since Me is installed, so you can read AND virus scan it with Linux or 2000 or XP hosted antivirus programs and all will treat the thing as a data drive if you tell 2000 or XP not to boot the Me drive-- to do this, the drive needs to be slave, your original OS should stay as master. If you want to do from Windows, copy what you need off the box you are sticking it in or set up a default windows install with AV installed updated as a killing only OS on a HD, then wipe your "killing" install when done if it gets trashed (this means TWO HDs get stuck in or rejumpered around properly and you maybe get to set up a Windows install plus an AV install and update if you want something you will not loose much important data stuff from to run the scan from).

    Oh, 98 SE can read and clean Me HDs also, if good AV is present in the 98 SE install and it is updated. Cleaning OS gets master, the drive to be cleaned becomes slave. Since the OS is corrupt, clean it as data in another box. Then, if you want, once clean, back up to CD-ROM what you need in the way of data from the cleaned HD-- as pure data CDs, Nero will work.

    Possible problem with this whole scenario is this, though-- IF a reinstall was already attempted, just look and see if anything is left there in the way of data before promising to recover, OK??? The reinstall attempt may have destroyed some or much of what you want recover to such an extent that you cannot use easy recovery methods. Overwritten data is quite expensive to get back, and you usually get back PART of it at best.
  • NiGHTSNiGHTS San Diego Icrontian
    edited August 2004
    Problem solved, thank you.
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited August 2004
    Happy it is working again. :D
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