Will I get virus' from my old hard drive if I transfer the data?

Revolt · 7 May 2011 at 17:38

I want to get my stuff from my old PC onto my new PC but I'm unsure if it has any viruses or things that may effect my current computer. Would that happen and how can I prevent it if so?

AbsenceJam · 7 May 2011 at 17:53

Use AV software on your current computer and update it before copying anything over.

Zarf · 7 May 2011 at 19:29

Viruses aren't autonomous, connecting a drive with infected files on or simply copying infected files (If there even are any) over from an old hard drive won't "activate" them - You'd have to try to open or run an infected file for it to integrate itself with your new installation.

As was said, install some AV software, like Avast which is free, and scan the drive before copying the files over. It'll also do runtime scanning whenever you try to open a file.

oliver2601 · 7 May 2011 at 22:47

You would probably be safe. However, run some anti-virus software before opening any of the files on the old data just to be 99.9% sure.

panyan · 7 May 2011 at 22:56

Zarf said:
Viruses aren't autonomous, connecting a drive with infected files on or simply copying infected files (If there even are any) over from an old hard drive won't "activate" them - You'd have to try to open or run an infected file for it to integrate itself with your new installation.

i thought there were lots of viruses that exploit windows' autorun feature to infect the computer

peersonally, when i got an infected drive, is to boot a ubuntu live cd and scan the drive with a virus scanner - no hard drive to infect

AbsenceJam · 7 May 2011 at 23:03

panyan said:
i thought there were lots of viruses that exploit windows' autorun feature to infect the computer

peersonally, when i got an infected drive, is to boot a ubuntu live cd and scan the drive with a virus scanner - no hard drive to infect

They can't autorun with no entry, you need to execute them first.

Rroff · 7 May 2011 at 23:47

If autorun is enabled in the host OS and the HDD has an infected autorun file it will infect host OS, also its possible to malform the ntfs.sys on a HDD so as to infect the host OS (quite a few versions of windows are susceptible to it due to MS being silly).

Other than that aslong as you don't copy and run any executable files/api .bat, .exe, .com, .sys, .dll, etc. then it can't really infect the host OS.