Hard drive question.

[Gdog96]

So I got this used hard drive from my friend because he no longer needs it. I want to put it in my system as some extra storage, (I already have an OS drive), but the thing is, I think it MIGHT have some viruses on there. Is there anyway I can be sure?

If there are viruses on there is it possible to format it without putting it into a PC? I'm saying this with the assumption that if it does have viruses they would spread to my other drives before I could format it (my plan is to format the drive in windows)

The drive also has windows XP on it, would this cause any problems when booting or anything?

Thanks everyone

 

[wfooshee]

The viruses won't spread just by being in your PC. They have to be accessed and activated by whatever method they're made to use, usually by opening a file, executing a macro, stuff like that. If you put it in as a second drive and immediately format it, you're good to go.

Even if it had a rootkit, as long as it's the second drive and doesn't boot your system, you're good to go.

That's one of the most common ways I have of cleaning customer drives, is removing them from the customer PC and connecting it to a known good PC, with lots of cool tools, as a second drive.

 

[Gdog96]

Thank you, I will give it a try later

 

[bergauk]

Another thing to do would be download GParted and burn it to a live CD. http://gparted.sourceforge.net/

Then you boot up into GParted and format it that way.