virus help on formatted hdd

[K-Swiggle]

ok guys im sure this is here already but i cant find any real help. i have a toshiba HDD from an old laptop. my brother distroyed his computer and i stole the HDD from him since he cant use it anymore and i checkd it and it had viruses on it. i ran my AVG and got rid of them. i then deleted the volumes on the HDD and reformated it to use as a storage HDD for my anime and PDF books i backed up from my collection. anyways i know there are viruses and rootkits that can still be on the HDD but AVG doesnt find anything and all the help i find are for primary HDDs that have windows installed. since this will be a 2nd...well 3rd hard drive that i will install on my computer but want to make sure its 100% risk free before i install it for my main rig. if there is no way to make sure i will just buy a new drive just for that since i dont wanna bog down my main HDD for my rig. thanks for the help guys.

 

also what affects does having more than 2 HDD/SSD installed on one computer (non-raid). will there be like slow speeds or anything like that. i know HDDs are slower than SSD but i mean just in general on stuff like that XD. just currious guys and gals haha

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, K-swigle said:

i know there are viruses and rootkits that can still be on the HDD

How do you know? If you formatted it, its basically impossible.

 

2 minutes ago, K-swigle said:

also what affects does having more than 2 HDD/SSD installed on one computer (non-raid). will there be like slow speeds or anything like that

There will just be different directories you can use. Speeds will be the same as the individual drives.

[SolarpandaS]

Wipe the drive completely. ccleaner and windows both are good programs. (i suggest ccleaner)

 

As for performance, there should be no issues with nonraid as long as the sata controller has all the bandwidth split up properly. I know on my mobo the m.2 and my sata 1 have the same bandwidth but you shouldnt have a problem

[K-Swiggle]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

How do you know? If you formatted it, its basically impossible.

 

There will just be different directories you can use. Speeds will be the same as the individual drives.

just from reading online people saying they can hide even from an antivirus since they hid in the "cracks" of the drive per-say 

 

and oh ok just didnt know if the computer will get (for simple terms) confused when there are so many drives haha

[SolarpandaS]

1 minute ago, K-swigle said:

and oh ok just didnt know if the computer will get (for simple terms) confused when there are so many drives haha

if it doesnt show up at first go to device manager and scan for new devices. windows plugnplay is probably good enough, if thats what you mean by "confusion"

[K-Swiggle]

1 minute ago, SolarpandaS said:

Wipe the drive completely. ccleaner and windows both are good programs. (i suggest ccleaner)

 

As for performance, there should be no issues with nonraid as long as the sata controller has all the bandwidth split up properly. I know on my mobo the m.2 and my sata 1 have the same bandwidth but you shouldnt have a problem

yea ive used ccleaner before will it do a better job at scanning a reciently wiped drive

 

and yea i have the msi gaming m5 mobo and it has 2 sets of sata one for high bandwith drives and one set for lower kinds (what ever that means XD)

[SolarpandaS]

2 minutes ago, K-swigle said:

yea ive used ccleaner before will it do a better job at scanning a reciently wiped drive

 

and yea i have the msi gaming m5 mobo and it has 2 sets of sata one for high bandwith drives and one set for lower kinds (what ever that means XD)

ccleaner is good if you want to double check i suppose

 

you should be fine on the sata side

[Electronics Wizardy]

14 minutes ago, K-swigle said:

yea ive used ccleaner before will it do a better job at scanning a reciently wiped drive

Thats not a problem. They won't be on the drive after a format. If your paranoid, wipe the drive with something like dd or hdtune on windows. CCleaner won't help at all.

[SolarpandaS]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Thats not a problem. They won't be on the drive after a format. If your paranoid, wipe the drive with something like dd or hdtune on windows. CCleaner won't help at all.

he formatted it? ok

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, SolarpandaS said:

he formatted it? ok

but MBR, but still unlikey.

[K-Swiggle]

4 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Thats not a problem. They won't be on the drive after a format. If your paranoid, wipe the drive with something like dd or hdtune on windows. CCleaner won't help at all.

yea noticed ccleaner isnt helping right now guess its just to help "clean"up space haha. i think ima just buy a new one when i get extra money. haha 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, K-swigle said:

yea noticed ccleaner isnt helping right now guess its just to help "clean"up space haha. i think ima just buy a new one when i get extra money. haha 

What problems do you have?

 

There aren't any viruese on the drive.

[RadiatingLight]

make sure all partitions are formatted and merged into one. other than that, it should be good

 

the chances of a rootkit infecting the drive are extremely low, and rootkits don't usually target HDDs (they usually target motherboard firmware)

[Naeaes]

These people don't seem to know exactly what a rootkit is. Guys, the HDD has a flash ROM too like any device that stores the firmware and flash cache. It's an entirely separate chip. If a virus finds it's way in there, no amount of cleaning and formatting the platters makes a difference. 

 

OP, the only way I know of removing a rootkit off of a ROM is overwriting the firmware. Maybe Toshiba has a tool for it. I wouldn't go doing this on a non-OEM software.

Short of that, you need to really nuke the drive. Not just overwrite the partitions actually remove and overwrite the EFI/MBR partitions. That's where you don't want a virus to be either. Run disk part and run the CLEAN command for it to get rid of the EFI and/or MBR partitions. Then overwrite it with bart's boot'n'nuke or CCLeaner or whatever.

[K-Swiggle]

10 hours ago, Naeaes said:

These people don't seem to know exactly what a rootkit is. Guys, the HDD has a flash ROM too like any device that stores the firmware and flash cache. It's an entirely separate chip. If a virus finds it's way in there, no amount of cleaning and formatting the platters makes a difference. 

 

OP, the only way I know of removing a rootkit off of a ROM is overwriting the firmware. Maybe Toshiba has a tool for it. I wouldn't go doing this on a non-OEM software.

Short of that, you need to really nuke the drive. Not just overwrite the partitions actually remove and overwrite the EFI/MBR partitions. That's where you don't want a virus to be either. Run disk part and run the CLEAN command for it to get rid of the EFI and/or MBR partitions. Then overwrite it with bart's boot'n'nuke or CCLeaner or whatever.

soundslike a lot of work for a tiny drive. thanks for the advice but ima just get a new one and hack this drive into somehting else haha ^-^