Question re external hard drive

10 years ago

If computer A had a virus when you backed everything up to an external hard drive, will it transfer to computer B?

I kept getting a message that a virus was detected, yet when I ran my anti-virus it didn't show any virus and there's nothing in quarantine.

I got a new computer and am afraid to place the info from the hard drive onto the new computer.

What do I do?

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Comments (5)

ravencajun Zone 8b TX
10 years ago
last modified: 10 years ago
If there is an active virus or malware on a computer and you back it up in tact to an external hard drive you definitely included that too. Just transferred data would do nothing to clean or destroy the virus. If you then take that back up and install it on a different computer the virus or malware will be going along for the ride. You can connect the back up hard drive and scan it with a good anti virus program and anti malware program like malwarebytes and possibly clean it depending on what type of infection it is.

What type of backup did you do that could matter. Was it a full image, clone, or just certain files that were backed up?
jemdandy
10 years ago
I think that the type of file that was made for the backup may be critical for scanning success. If the file was an "image" of the original computer, then it probably can be scanned for malware and viruses. However. removing such items changes the file and it may no longer be an image of the original and can not be used to transfer the operating system to a new computer. An unadulterated image file is required for moving an operating system and its installed applications.

If the the backup is merely a collection of copies of data files, then scan the external hard drive to rid it of baddies before copying these file to the new computer.

When backing up data files, often backup software does not just make copies of the data, but creates a large data base containing compressed files of the data files. I'm not sure if this type of file can be scanned for viruses. Carefully read the capabilities of the scanner software. Some may say they have the ability to scan compressed files, but this may mean only files that are individually compressed and not a batch of files that have been collected into a single compressed (backup) file.
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clearwaters
Original Author
10 years ago
Okay, so the next question is what do I connect to so that the back up can be scanned beforing transferring to the new computer?
ravencajun Zone 8b TX
10 years ago
You need to clarify what type of backup you did before anyone can answer that which is why I asked.
clearwaters
Original Author
10 years ago
I really don't know. It's a Seagate external hard drive. I plugged it into an AC outlet and then used the cable to go into the tower. The rest is done on it's own. That's about as tech savvy as this old women gets. I wanted to make sure that all the patterns and such that I had saved into documents on the old (12 years) computer would be saved so I could retrieve them for the new machine.

Question re external hard drive

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ravencajun Zone 8b TX

jemdandy

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Question re external hard drive

Comments (5)

ravencajun Zone 8b TX

jemdandy

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clearwatersOriginal Author

ravencajun Zone 8b TX

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