My external hard drive was recently used to back up some data on a computer, but it unfortunately later turned out to have Vundo and a variety of other nasty problems. I’m not too keen to use my hard drive now that it may potentially contain infected files. I want to format it but have minimal chance of getting my clean computer infected. How can I do this without it running and potentially transferring any infected files to my computer? I’m aware that some viruses use the autorun feature to jump between computers sharing USB storage devices. Thanks, Jason
I’m assuming that you don’t need the data on the drive. If you do, after you turn the Autorun feature in Windows, you can run your virus scan on the drive and clean it.
Otherwise, go to Disk Management, right-click on the blue bar of the drive you want to get rid of the virus on, left-click on “Delete partition.” This kills everything, including the data as well as the file format. This will turn the blue bar black. Then you can right-click on the black bar, left-click on Create new partition, and then repartition and format the drive. Make sure you check the Quick Format box, or you’ll be there for a day formatting the drive.
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