Backing up old photos

[Yifti]

Hello,

I have a PC with a lot of photos on it. They are important. I plan on buying an external hard drive and backing everything up.

The catch? The PC wasn't on for about a year and a half, since I built my new PC.

Also, I was young and dumb, and I am afraid it has a virus/malware on it, lurking.

How do I approach this situation? And make sure nothing malicious boards the external hard drive?

Thanks!

[Electronics Wizardy]

Probably do a offline clone then. SO just put the drive in anouther computer and clone over with something like ddrescue. THen mount that image and copy files from the image, and you can scan for malware then aswell.

[Yifti]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

Probably do a offline clone then. SO just put the drive in anouther computer and clone over with something like ddrescue. THen mount that image and copy files from the image, and you can scan for malware then aswell.

Thanks. Can you please explain more? Wouldn't the malware transfer through the drive? Mount?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Yifti said:

Thanks. Can you please explain more? Wouldn't the malware transfer through the drive? Mount?

So you make a clone first, so if you screw anything up, you still have the data.

 

Then you can scan the drive, scan on anouther os like linux if your worried so then most windows marlware won't run.

 

 

[Radium_Angel]

24 minutes ago, Yifti said:

Hello,

I have a PC with a lot of photos on it. They are important. I plan on buying an external hard drive and backing everything up.

The catch? The PC wasn't on for about a year and a half, since I built my new PC.

Also, I was young and dumb, and I am afraid it has a virus/malware on it, lurking.

How do I approach this situation? And make sure nothing malicious boards the external hard drive?

Thanks!

Easy way? remove old hard drive, attach to new PC. Boot to windows as normal. Old drive will be seen as a secondary drive.

Copy files as you need to new PC.

 

[Yifti]

10 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

So you make a clone first, so if you screw anything up, you still have the data.

 

Then you can scan the drive, scan on anouther os like linux if your worried so then most windows marlware won't run.

 

 

Thanks. Is there a guide somewhere?

[Yifti]

1 minute ago, Radium_Angel said:

Easy way? remove old hard drive, attach to new PC. Boot to windows as normal. Old drive will be seen as a secondary drive.

Copy files as you need to new PC.

 

Thanks.